Dune II

[Ramza00]

Sorry, can you clarify: are you agreeing with my point that spice is more than a macguffin, or agreeing with gbaji that it's simply "a thing that the characters want"? Because the paragraph above reads like you agree with me about melange being omnipresent and deeply influential to the world and plot in more ways than "MacGuffin."

I believe Spice is a macguffin when we are first introduced to it in Dune story A of book 1, then in story B (the desert) we see it is omnipresent, then Dune story C of book 1 the war it becomes a macguffin again for we see it as an agent of change that shift the ground beneath everyone’s feet.

How do I get into Lupin III? It looks super fun but I'm a little lost -- that there are, like, four different series. Is there a quintessential "starting point" for newbies?

I been trying the same myself *laughs*, I watched like 30 episodes and for greater context there are

• the 1960s manga
• 023 episodes, part 1, 1970s, green jacket Lupin the more serious gentleman thief heroic knight aka lawful
• 155 episodes, part 2, 1970s, red jacket Lupin the more outlandish like he is a chaos agent goblin
• 050 episodes, part 3, 1984, pink jacket even more outlandish people often prefer red over pink and this part is not recommended for a first timer
• 013 episodes, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, 2012 follows Fujiko in a serious adult type role
• 026 episodes, part 4, 2015, blue jacket the modern stuff watch this first if you want modern (or the Fujiko Mine miniseries)
• 024 episodes, part 5, 2018, different modern stuff
• 026 episodes, part 6, 2021, different modern stuff
• (not counting all the movies, ovas, and so on just trying to give you ideas on eras

all those parts are their own things, a loose continuity much like Alternate Universes. The different parts have slightly different personality styles for Lupin, the tech of the world, the adventures and obstacles, etc. Some people track Lupin by the color of his jacket, and so on for there are mild differences with what makes Lupin tick in each one. What drives Lupin forward and what are his desires.

I was recommended to watch Part 2 and Fujiko Mine miniseries. Very different styles with the Fujiko being more dark and serious aka prestige anime stuff while the Red jacket is the gang on silly adventures. Green Jacket like Part 1 is Lupin closer to a lawful hero.

If you want to try Green Jacket the original series is there, but also it was trying to find its roots and decided what it wanted to be. The 1979 movie The Castle of Cagliostro is a green jacket awesome entry point (according to others) and it is done by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki the famous Studio Ghibli director as his first movie before founding Studio Ghibli.

Like I said earlier my knowledge of Lupin is basic so far, I enjoyed what I encountered so far. And Lupin has influenced too many things to list , from Cowboy Bebop which we already mentioned, to April O’Neil beinf based off Fujiko when she wore a yellow dress for a few episodes (if I recall a red jacket Miyazaki episode he did for the tv show part 2), Dr Eggman / Robotnik of Sonic the Hedgehog, the Great Mouse Detective and lots of stuff from Pixar and Disney, Shinji Hirako of Bleach (one of the Visored), and so on.

Shannon Strucci youtuber and podcaster has done some twitter threads on where to start, here is 2 minutes her explaining something about how the series drives itself
https://twitter.com/plentyofalcoves/...978624?lang=en
she has also done two Kill James Bond episodes guest episodes on Lupin, the 2019 CGI movie Lupin the 3rd The First which is red jacket and the first cgi movie and we also learn a little more of Lupins grandpa where he gets the name from as the plot. And the other movie they covered was the Castle of C that 1979 Miyazaki movie.

Here is a website talking a little more about the jackets as entry points and slight styles differences.
https://www.lupincentral.com/green-jacket

Enjoy 🙂

[gbaji]

Sorry, can you clarify: are you agreeing with my point that spice is more than a macguffin, or agreeing with gbaji that it's simply "a thing that the characters want"? Because the paragraph above reads like you agree with me about melange being omnipresent and deeply influential to the world and plot in more ways than "MacGuffin."

I was not dismissing Spice as a mere Macguffin though (nor Unobtainium, which may have been missing from the theatrical release, but is in the Blueray edition, so I'm assuming most people have seen that version). I was speaking of it being a setting "thing". It may have significant impact, but it's something unique and special to the setting, which does not exist in our own world, and allows for a "more sci-fi" aspect to... well... sci-fi). In Star Trek, we have transporters, and warp drive, and shields, and phasers, and photon torpedoes, and holodecks. None of those are macguffins, but all are "things that are there in the setting" that set it apart from "things that exist in our own world" (or even things that exist in other sci-fi settings).

I was making the observation that the things you listed off and praised Dune for (and contrasted in Firefly for not having similar) are all "sci-fi things". Spice. The guild. The Benet Geserrit. The Gom Jabbar. The Worms. You literally listed these things off, and made a point about how Firefly didn't have similar things, and used that contrast as your primary argument for why Dune was a more fleshed out setting than Firefly.

I'm disagreeing with you that those "sci-fi things" are what make a sci-fi setting more complete, or even "better". What I liked about Firefly was that most of it was very much "normal stuff" that we would expect to be around in our own world. Firefly was not about the tech in the series, and the tech did not drive the stories. It was just there in the background. The focus was on the characters and their decisions and actions. Firefly really only has two "unique sci-fi things": The Reavers, and River's abilities. Everything else is pretty darn mundane. I mean, mundane taken a few steps ahead (spaceships, right?), but nothing that falls into the "science we can't really explain/define".

What I found interesting in the setting of Firefly is the historical stuff that leads us to those characters and their decisions and actions. I find a similar amount of "this is interesting" in Firefly as in Dune. Dune just focuses on a much larger/higher scale (it's all nobles fighting for control of stuff). Firefly focues on "how do mostly ordinary people survive in this world?". And yeah, it then tosses in curveballs with River and Simon. It's entirely possible that if we'd had another season or two, the show would have explored more of the "fantastic and unique sci-fi stuff". But it never got the chance really.


And yeah. As I said earlier, I actually really preferred the much more subtle method of blending of cultures and influences that Firefly showed us. I appreciated that they didn't say "this world has two cultural influences" and then show this by having two completely separate cultures. I mean, they could have. They could have really simplified this down and made the Aliance all Eastern, and the rebel colonists all Western, complete with actors of the respective ethical backgrounds, clothing styles, language, etc. IMO that would have been a horrible and hamfisted way of doing it. Instead, they took the much more nuanced and complex idea that "this is actually a blending of culture that everyone experiences all the time", and that the two political factions aren't actually divided on those lines much at all.

It felt much more "real" to me because of this, and frankly avoided some pretty obnoxious tropes at the same time.


Oh. And just because it was mentioned. I thought Bebop was "ok". The world/setting building was fine. My issue is that I'm just not a fan of Noir at all. So much of the theme and "feel" of the show garnered the same reaction I usually have to noir style stuff: "Ok. Great. Can we get past the obnoxious exposition and dramatic pauses/lighting/scenery and get to the story?". But that's just me. I suspect that a lot of the reason I don't place as much interest in the various worlds they visit in the series is preciesly because no matter where they go, they all have the same feel. May look different and have different places and things, but everything is treated as a set piece to display the same basic theme. Again. That's just me.

The actual odd bit is that I'm also not a fan of western/cowbooy styles either. I almost didn't watch Firefly at all when it first came out because the network really downplayed the show, and IIRC didn't show previews/ads that actually indicated this was a sci-fi show at all. I remember thinking "ah. A dumb western action show that I have no interest in at all". It felt like a retread of "Dr Quinn, medicine woman" or something. The only reason I watched it at all was because my roomate and I were watching another show that aired on the same network before it (John Doe), which did have a premise we were interested in. That show ended, and we literally didn't pick up the remote and change the channel. Firefly started, and we see the western style bar scene in "The Train Job", and as we're watching there are these very subtle anachronisms. The cups they're drinking out of are a bit too plastic looking. They're talking about a war and unification day (what's that?). Then there's this odd extra hydraulic kinda sound when they **** their weapons, which is odd. Then the fight breaks out, spills outside, and someone crashes through a... holographic window!? Then a spaceship hovers above them, and threatens to blast the folks to bits, while our heroes escape up the ramp. Huh!

And the final bit which sold me entirely on the series was Jayne's line about a cargo ship not having guns on it. That one opening scene is probably the best opening scene for a TV show I've ever seen. It told me everything I needed to know about the setting and the characters, and showed me that this wasn't either a typical western, nor a typiical sci-fi show, and that tropes would be ignored (for the most part). Needless to say, my roomate and I continued watching the show from that point onward (and yeah, struggled through that season as the network kept advertisting episodes, then not airing them, or airing a different one, or pre-empting for a sporting event, and then just cancelled it entirely and then finally aired the actual original pilot at the very end. It was sad).

But yeah. The feel/theme/setting of Firefly sucked me in at first viewing, and never once disappointed from that point on. I'm surely a bit biased as a result, but I definitely feel that the setting was extremely strong in it. Far stronger than any show I've seen establsh, especially in such a short time. And yeah. I liked that it didn't feel the need to beat the audience over the head with various aspects of the setting. It just showed you things and let you take it in instead.


I also love Dune. But for very very very different reasons.

[Ionathus]

I was not dismissing Spice as a mere Macguffin though

Thanks for the clarification.

I was making the observation that the things you listed off and praised Dune for (and contrasted in Firefly for not having similar) are all "sci-fi things". Spice. The guild. The Benet Geserrit. The Gom Jabbar. The Worms. You literally listed these things off, and made a point about how Firefly didn't have similar things, and used that contrast as your primary argument for why Dune was a more fleshed out setting than Firefly.

I'm disagreeing with you that those "sci-fi things" are what make a sci-fi setting more complete, or even "better".

Either I miscommunicated or you misunderstood my point, because I definitely was not saying that you need "sci-fi things" to have solid worldbuilding. My point was that you need unique and memorable things to make a world worth remembering - supernatural or advanced tech, sure, but also culture and politics and worldview. You're reducing that idea down to "sci-fi gadget," at least in your response to me, and I think that's a mistake.

I agree with you that good worldbuilding isn't exclusively about having the coolest James Bond gadgets. Dune's worldbuilding isn't strong because the gadgets are super-special: it's strong because the creator took some divergent points from the world we know and then built a solid, interconnected network of consequences around those divergent points. I don't care how big or small the divergence is. I just care what the writer does with it, and how they make their world memorable. I mentioned the Fremen cultural practice of sheathing an unbloodied knife. There's nothing sci-fi about that. The Bene Gesserit litany against fear is likewise a fully mundane meditation. It doesn't need sci-fi spectacle to work.

Notice that I also called out Inara and the Companions Guild as one of the more unique elements of Firefly. This organization has no sci-fi trappings -- it's totally mundane in function and methods -- but it's still effective as an example of worldbuilding. It makes this world feel like it has some depth and interconnected tissue to distinguish itself from any other western. I wasn't dinging Firefly for not having enough "shiny toys" for my brain to play with. I was saying that it didn't put effort into showing depth of worldbuilding -- and I also said, multiple times, that I was fine with that, because the story it wanted to tell didn't need more significant worldbuilding.

And yeah. As I said earlier, I actually really preferred the much more subtle method of blending of cultures and influences that Firefly showed us. I appreciated that they didn't say "this world has two cultural influences" and then show this by having two completely separate cultures. I mean, they could have. They could have really simplified this down and made the Aliance all Eastern, and the rebel colonists all Western, complete with actors of the respective ethical backgrounds, clothing styles, language, etc. IMO that would have been a horrible and hamfisted way of doing it. Instead, they took the much more nuanced and complex idea that "this is actually a blending of culture that everyone experiences all the time", and that the two political factions aren't actually divided on those lines much at all.

It felt much more "real" to me because of this, and frankly avoided some pretty obnoxious tropes at the same time.

I have no idea where you're getting this repeated idea that I wanted two completely separate cultures. Is it my response to Tyndmyr, where I said that a mostly-Chinese Alliance would have been an interesting approach? What I was trying to say there was that any Asian representation would have been more interesting than what we got -- which was freaking zero.

I wanted the thing that Firefly was pretending to be -- a blend of cultures. We didn't get a blend of cultures. We got nine American characters with American motivations, who occasionally substituted broken Chinese for swearing. Doing the same Western thing you always do, but putting an Asian veneer on it, is not "blending cultures." It's cosplaying.

[story of watching Firefly for the first time]

Thanks for sharing that. I think I now understand what entranced you about the show. I found a lot of the same things charming. Like I said, I enjoyed Firefly quite a lot.

I know that worldbuilding is always going to have a subjective element to it. The best I can say here is that most of what you saw as successful worldbuilding, I saw as successful storytelling. They're not mutually exclusive -- there can definitely be overlap -- but I didn't see overlap in my viewing. I just don't find Firefly's wider world memorable...not for its lack of complicated sci-fi concepts, but for its bigger-picture lack of unique choices. And I'll say it until I'm blue in the face, but I'm okay with that. Because I don't think the world was the point. The story was the point. Firefly is a snappy, well-acted, well-written show, and that was its strength.

[Tyndmyr]

The actual odd bit is that I'm also not a fan of western/cowbooy styles either. I almost didn't watch Firefly at all when it first came out because the network really downplayed the show, and IIRC didn't show previews/ads that actually indicated this was a sci-fi show at all. I remember thinking "ah. A dumb western action show that I have no interest in at all". It felt like a retread of "Dr Quinn, medicine woman" or something.

Fox did truly bungle the advertising of it. I didn't watch it until after it was already cancelled, I believe, because while I loooove sci fi, it had basically no advertising promoting it as such, and so I was unaware it was even a sci fi show until it was being cancelled. Which, granted, took them like ten minutes to do. So it was a bit awkward discovering the show at the moment there was clearly going to be no more of it. Oh, for a while there was hope, and the movie, which I did like despite not being all I hoped. It felt like an attempt to quickly slam in the planned climax of the show, without a few more seasons of building to it. Not unlike season two of Dollhouse, really.

But at this point, yeah, all real hope of recreating that is pretty faded.

I think western/sci fi can work as a mashup, but it really, really needs to be more than just that, and it can be pretty hard to make a formula for that something else.

T
I have no idea where you're getting this repeated idea that I wanted two completely separate cultures. Is it my response to Tyndmyr, where I said that a mostly-Chinese Alliance would have been an interesting approach? What I was trying to say there was that any Asian representation would have been more interesting than what we got -- which was freaking zero.

I am pretty confident that the character of Inara was depicted as Asian. And apparently Simon, River and Kaylee were all originally slated to be cast as Chinese, but during casting, the actors apparently had great chemistry, and so that plan was scrapped. This particular story is supported by the art book, and by, well, the actors having great chemistry in general.

The main cast of Firefly also has more diverse representation than almost any show of the era, and well done at that. The characters are actually important, and do not serve a mere token role. If you're looking for a bit of a futuristic melting pot where conflict is drawn around different lines, then...that's what it is.

[Ramza00]

( I am not a fan of Firefly, it is fine, but consider me my own opinion )

Firefly had many problems that would make it hard for it to be a financial success, you had to do everything right to make it viable. It was released at the wrong time, but also the right time. 2002 right after 9/11 happened in the real life. It is a show about an else world that feels dark and gritty which could have worked a whole lot to be a contrast with the long 90s much like many other shows and movies from 1999 were occurring. The whole civil war theme feels off when the world feels like it is happening for better or worse in real life.

Likewise the show was filmed more or less twice for it had to make enough of its money from 4:3 tv format, yet the execs at Fox insisted it be filmed in widescreen for dvd sales. And this Whedon show did sell a whole lot of dvds to the point we got a $40 million dollar movie green lit out of it and the money made about that at the box office which means it lost money.

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There are reasons why certain types of formats were done by Fox, WB. , and UPN in the 90s and 00s for they were cheap to film about. A show like Buffy or the X-Files takes place in our world thus it is cheaper to film. Horror, Surreal Fantasy, Street Level Superheroes is cheap to film. Sci Fi costs money and there are reasons why you see the big 3 tv networks do those shows like Paramount / CBS with star trek for the higher ratings, allows you to pay for those costs as a moat to prevent competition.

Now there is way more than this, and I agree Fox screwed up Firefly and Serenity…to the point one who is paranoid would think they would want to sabotage the show but in a way everyone is happy so you can work with various talent who made the show happen again. *shrug*

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and I skipped all the positives and pros of Firefly and how it was groundbreaking. There is groundbreaking stuff in it, I just see those things as already happening due to some of that same talent that is all. The show is close to 25 years old now.

[gbaji]

Either I miscommunicated or you misunderstood my point, because I definitely was not saying that you need "sci-fi things" to have solid worldbuilding. My point was that you need unique and memorable things to make a world worth remembering - supernatural or advanced tech, sure, but also culture and politics and worldview. You're reducing that idea down to "sci-fi gadget," at least in your response to me, and I think that's a mistake.

That was not my intent, but maybe poor wording early on in my post. I clarified later to "unique sci-fi things". My intention was to focus on "unique things in this story that exist only in this story and setting". I used the examples of things that we uniquely associate with Star Trek as an example. I think that parallels the examples of things you listed as liking about Dune, which was why I brought it up.

It just appeared to me that the things that you used to contrast Dune and Firefly was the existence of (and the number of) these "unique and memorable" things. Which was what I was trying (perhaps not successfully) to addresss. And yes, my point is that I don't feel that those things are necessary for good worldbuilding. And yes, as I stated earlier, can sometimes become a crutch to good worldbuilding (but definitely not always!).]

Dune's worldbuilding isn't strong because the gadgets are super-special: it's strong because the creator took some divergent points from the world we know and then built a solid, interconnected network of consequences around those divergent points. I don't care how big or small the divergence is. I just care what the writer does with it, and how they make their world memorable. I mentioned the Fremen cultural practice of sheathing an unbloodied knife. There's nothing sci-fi about that. The Bene Gesserit litany against fear is likewise a fully mundane meditation. It doesn't need sci-fi spectacle to work.

Right. And let met make it clear that I agree with you on this point. But my counter point was that, while this is absolutely true, the things you actually listed in your earlier post were specifically those "unique and memorable" things. Take away the Spice, and all of the direct effects it has on people, and you basicaly have "war of the roses in space". No Spice, no Worms, no Fremen, no Bene Geserrit with the Voice, or the Job Gobbar, or the mutated Spacer's Guild, or pretty much all the stuff you listed.

That's not to say that the Fremen didn't have interesting aspects to them. They did. But in a very stock way that could have been lifted from just about any other story about some indiginous/native people fighting against an occupying force. And while when Herbert did it, it was perhaps not so much a trope, but let's face it "can't sheath an unbloodied blade" has been overdone to death (Klingons. Narn. Every "culture with an honor tradition using swords/blades" that has like ever existed in fiction or reality). I don't blame Herbert for including it, but that's actually something I give a hard eyeroll to every single time I see it in a film or tv show now.

And please don't take this to mean that I don't appreciate the political and social aspects of Dune. One of the reasons why it's such a great story is that it containes that "unique and memorable" thing (spice) and incorporates it into pretty much every aspect of the story, but that is simply built onto what would otherwise be an excellent story of political intrigue and conflict anyway. It's not great because of Spice. It's great already. And then we add in Spice and that makes it that much better.

I wasn't dinging Firefly for not having enough "shiny toys" for my brain to play with. I was saying that it didn't put effort into showing depth of worldbuilding -- and I also said, multiple times, that I was fine with that, because the story it wanted to tell didn't need more significant worldbuilding.

Fair enough. I think you can see how I might have gotten that impression from your original post though. It really did seem like what you were doing was equating lack of "effort into showing depth of worldbuilding" to "the absence of shiny things". I personally found it very refreshing (especially given the time period the show came out in, and what sorts of common factors went into sci-fi/fantasy shows at the time) that it *didn't* have a lot of those things. It was just a straight up, well thought out and consistent story setting, with consistent and well thought out characters, who were interesting, and worked, and fit perfectly into the setting they were in. And that they were able to settle into that incredibly strong comfortable place of "I get these characters and how they work together and in the setting" in such a short time is amazing, and is arguably why so many people lamented the cancellation of the show. Most tv shows take a full season or even two before the characters fully "gel". Firefly does that in like 2-3 episodes.

Which is pretty darn impressive.

I have no idea where you're getting this repeated idea that I wanted two completely separate cultures. Is it my response to Tyndmyr, where I said that a mostly-Chinese Alliance would have been an interesting approach? What I was trying to say there was that any Asian representation would have been more interesting than what we got -- which was freaking zero.

Because every time you provide an example of what you want out of a "multi-cultural setting" you talk about separate characters or events that are uniquely and identifiably (stereotpically even) "that one culture" or "that other culture". Every time you lament the absence of asian actors in the show, you are saying this. I get that you don't think you are, but that's literally how I interpret it.

I wanted the thing that Firefly was pretending to be -- a blend of cultures. We didn't get a blend of cultures. We got nine American characters with American motivations, who occasionally substituted broken Chinese for swearing. Doing the same Western thing you always do, but putting an Asian veneer on it, is not "blending cultures." It's cosplaying.

Ok. What would you have wanted? Asian actors? Playing identifyable asian characters (and what exactly, without resorting to stereotype, is an "asian character"?). Do we have to include the tired asian tropes to do this? Have a criminal organization, complete with tatoos, fingers cut off for failure, and martial arts expertise (perhaps engaged in drug or counterfeiting operations while hiding behind a laundry shop?) to show that "this is a multicultural setting with asian influence"?

I liked that Firefly *didn't* do that.

I guess to me, it's a broader aspect of the concept of multicultural and "blending" of cultures. There are two broad ways to approach this:

1. Show people from the culture the show is aimed at, but include elements from other cultures, showing that "people who look like the audience can adopt things from other cultures and have it just be natural to them". IMO, this has the effect of expanding the horizons of the target audience.

2. Show a mix of people from the cultures involved, but have each one distinct. They share the same geography, but not the same culture. Often utilizing stereotpyes to make it clear which is which. IMO, this has the effect of endorsing cultural balkanization.

As you might imagine from my post above, I much prever the first over the second. Unfortunately, almost universally, the second method is what is used, so much so that many people actually complain when it's not there.


And yes. We can suggest that they could have included more asian actors in the foreground. But here's the problem with that. You have a setting with multicultural influence (western and eastern). The temptation, if you include an asian actor, is to make that asian actor representative of the "aisian influence" in the setting. Which leads to the risk of stereotyping. So those characters will exhibit all of the "asian cultural tropes", while the western actors will play characters that portray "western cultural tropes", and now you've got the very cultural balkanization that I don't like or want. They could have averted this by intentionally making each of the characters exhibit opposite stereotypes maybe, but that's still playing into the same trap IMO (but just pretending to be clever about it).

While certianly imperfect in terms of the ethnic spread that should have been there if we were really taking a random crew of people in that setting, I get why they choose to go the route they did, and actually think the result was better. You could put western actors playing western characters for a western audience, and show the multicultural aspects in the way those characters also threw out the occasional mandarin slang, or wore asian styled clothes, or ate asian foods, or used asian tools/methods for things, had asian signs/symbols all over the place, etc, but not feel the pressure to "do more" in that area. It's more subtle, but probably more representative of how characters in a truely blended society would actually behave (and yes, still somewhat playiing to modern stereotpes, but at least less aggregiously so IMO). There's no perfect way to do this.

It would be great if audiences and producers did not expect the tropes and stereotpyes. But they do. Which in turn puts pressure on writers/directors to showcase those things. Which IMO, would have made the show worse. It's not perfect on this regard, but better than it would have been otherwise.

And let's not forget that this was only one tiny bit of the background of the setting. Whedon was not writing an "east vs west" culture conflict in Firefly. So having that as a background element that otherwise didn't impact the conflicts and events in the series made that a bonus, and not a defining thing. The conflict was about Aliance vs Independents. That's what the focus was on. Had he made a point of putting in actors of different ethnicities in order to showcase the whole "western/eastern" aspect of the setting, there's every possibility that might have overshadowed what he actually wanted to focus on. They would have been spending writing time deciding which characters should act in which way, based on which cultural norms they should be expressing, and then second guessing that, then third guessing it, and re-writing, etc, and not using that time writing good solid stories. I much prefer that they just declared "this is a multcultural setting, but that's not what the story is about", tossed in a small amount of bits to show that, and then moved on to what they really wanted to write about.

I know that worldbuilding is always going to have a subjective element to it. The best I can say here is that most of what you saw as successful worldbuilding, I saw as successful storytelling. They're not mutually exclusive -- there can definitely be overlap -- but I didn't see overlap in my viewing. I just don't find Firefly's wider world memorable...not for its lack of complicated sci-fi concepts, but for its bigger-picture lack of unique choices. And I'll say it until I'm blue in the face, but I'm okay with that. Because I don't think the world was the point. The story was the point. Firefly is a snappy, well-acted, well-written show, and that was its strength.

Ok. I can accept that. I just don't agree on the world building bits. And maybe it's because Firefly was groundbreaking (for sci-fi) at the time in how it built its world, but perhaps is not seen as so special today (cause there have been imitators). And you're correct that a good portion of that was the characters. But the setting had a lot to do with it too. The characters were representative of the setting. Take away the history, and there's no war. Take away the war, and there's no Malcom/Zoe, and no Firefly, and no reason to go "to the black" in the first place.

Adding in the Reavers, the asian cultural bits (names, styles mostly), the backstory/history of that, the Blue Sun corp, River and the experiments done on her, numerous criminals/smugglers/brokers that they interact with, etc made for a fair amount of worldbuilding for such a short run IMO. Could there have been more? Absolutely.

I've seen a lot of shows run for a lot longer than Firefly, and have a lot less worldbuilding.

[Ionathus]

I am pretty confident that the character of Inara was depicted as Asian. And apparently Simon, River and Kaylee were all originally slated to be cast as Chinese, but during casting, the actors apparently had great chemistry, and so that plan was scrapped. This particular story is supported by the art book, and by, well, the actors having great chemistry in general.

The main cast of Firefly also has more diverse representation than almost any show of the era, and well done at that. The characters are actually important, and do not serve a mere token role. If you're looking for a bit of a futuristic melting pot where conflict is drawn around different lines, then...that's what it is.

I'm completely with you on the cast's diversity being great for its time. My complaint is more about the casting not matching the show's specific background -- we only ever see American heritage and cultural influences.

I'm fine with them rewriting some roles based on actor chemistry. And I'm happy with the cast that we got -- I don't think I'd want to change anyone out, they're all so memorable! I don't think that's an excuse for the lack of Asian actors though: if they were trying, they could have found plenty of one-episode or recurring roles for Asian actors to play. Hell, you wouldn't even need to change the writing (I mean, I would likely prefer tweaks, but you wouldn't have to). If you're going for a "futuristic melting pot," then you could argue each role is available for any actor to play, regardless of race.

In a perfect world, I'd have preferred a Firefly where there were some Asian-American writers in the writers' room, and some Asian-American actors onscreen, creating a show that both looks and "feels" like it has Asian influences. In a "good enough" world, I would've settled for Caucasian writers and some Asian-American actors, preferably in main or recurring character roles. But the lack of Asian-American actors anywhere in the show is almost laughably noticeable, once you're looking for it.

That was not my intent, but maybe poor wording early on in my post. I clarified later to "unique sci-fi things". My intention was to focus on "unique things in this story that exist only in this story and setting". I used the examples of things that we uniquely associate with Star Trek as an example. I think that parallels the examples of things you listed as liking about Dune, which was why I brought it up.

It just appeared to me that the things that you used to contrast Dune and Firefly was the existence of (and the number of) these "unique and memorable" things. Which was what I was trying (perhaps not successfully) to addresss. And yes, my point is that I don't feel that those things are necessary for good worldbuilding. And yes, as I stated earlier, can sometimes become a crutch to good worldbuilding (but definitely not always!).]

Thanks for clarifying! I see what you mean.

I do believe that "unique things that only exist in this story and setting" is a workable definition of worldbuilding. That doesn't have to be unique tech (it can be totally mundane) but it should be a unique cultural dynamic, or a unique values system, or something along those lines at least. Worldbuilding is, to me, the act of introducing your audience to all of the things that are different between their real world and your fictional one -- or at least, everything that's relevant to the story you're telling.

I'm not sure how other people see it, but "worldbuilding" in the traditional sense seems like a purely sci-fi or fantasy concept to me. Why? Well, in fiction set in the real world, there's nothing unique you need to introduce the audience to. All the tech, but also all the morals and cultural assumptions, are the same. So I do believe that if your story breaks from "baseline reality", you have decisions to make about how significantly it differs, and how you're going to show those changes. There's no "right" amount, because it depends on the story you're telling.

Right. And let met make it clear that I agree with you on this point. But my counter point was that, while this is absolutely true, the things you actually listed in your earlier post were specifically those "unique and memorable" things. Take away the Spice, and all of the direct effects it has on people, and you basicaly have "war of the roses in space". No Spice, no Worms, no Fremen, no Bene Geserrit with the Voice, or the Job Gobbar, or the mutated Spacer's Guild, or pretty much all the stuff you listed.

That's not to say that the Fremen didn't have interesting aspects to them. They did. But in a very stock way that could have been lifted from just about any other story about some indiginous/native people fighting against an occupying force. And while when Herbert did it, it was perhaps not so much a trope, but let's face it "can't sheath an unbloodied blade" has been overdone to death (Klingons. Narn. Every "culture with an honor tradition using swords/blades" that has like ever existed in fiction or reality). I don't blame Herbert for including it, but that's actually something I give a hard eyeroll to every single time I see it in a film or tv show now.

And please don't take this to mean that I don't appreciate the political and social aspects of Dune. One of the reasons why it's such a great story is that it containes that "unique and memorable" thing (spice) and incorporates it into pretty much every aspect of the story, but that is simply built onto what would otherwise be an excellent story of political intrigue and conflict anyway. It's not great because of Spice. It's great already. And then we add in Spice and that makes it that much better.

Got it - thanks for the context! Don't think I have anything else to say about it, but I see what you mean now.

Ok. What would you have wanted? Asian actors? Playing identifyable asian characters (and what exactly, without resorting to stereotype, is an "asian character"?). Do we have to include the tired asian tropes to do this? Have a criminal organization, complete with tatoos, fingers cut off for failure, and martial arts expertise (perhaps engaged in drug or counterfeiting operations while hiding behind a laundry shop?) to show that "this is a multicultural setting with asian influence"?

No. Of course I don't want Asian stereotypes. I said "some Asian voices on this creative team would've been nice" and you reacted as if the only way to do that was with stereotypes.

You can incorporate another culture's values, history, beliefs, and mythology into your world without engaging in caricatures. I'm not going to get into those differences out of an abundance of Real World Talk caution. But if you think the only way to put any amount of Asian influence into a work is to use the worst Asian stereotypes you can think of, I imagine you're not consuming a lot of Asian-American media.

I guess to me, it's a broader aspect of the concept of multicultural and "blending" of cultures. There are two broad ways to approach this:

1. Show people from the culture the show is aimed at, but include elements from other cultures, showing that "people who look like the audience can adopt things from other cultures and have it just be natural to them". IMO, this has the effect of expanding the horizons of the target audience.

2. Show a mix of people from the cultures involved, but have each one distinct. They share the same geography, but not the same culture. Often utilizing stereotpyes to make it clear which is which. IMO, this has the effect of endorsing cultural balkanization.

This isn't real. You invented this binary choice. Here's a third option:

3. Include the "other" culture in your writer's room and in the cast. Allow them to bring stories from their upbringing, culture, and historical background into the story you're telling, then work with them to find ways to relate that experience with your "main" audience's culture.

Because every time you provide an example of what you want out of a "multi-cultural setting" you talk about separate characters or events that are uniquely and identifiably (stereotpically even) "that one culture" or "that other culture". Every time you lament the absence of asian actors in the show, you are saying this. I get that you don't think you are, but that's literally how I interpret it.

That was not my intent. The idea of an "American half" of the crew and an "Asian half" of the crew was your invention, not mine. The lines don't have to be drawn that clearly and unambiguously -- for example, Asian-Americans exist. 20 million people in the U.S. identify as Asian or Pacific Islander. Some of them are first-generation immigrants with almost no western influences...others have families who have lived on the continent for centuries. There's a boundless wealth of "blended" experiences there, of families who have preserved their own traditions even as they've adopted some customs of (or even intermarried with) the surrounding culture.

I genuinely can't understand why you cling to this binary choice of "remove Asians entirely" or "only do Asian stereotypes." Is that what "representation" is to you? Stereotype?

Flip the script here. Imagine how strange a similar conversation would sound to a Westerner who's listening to a Chinese creative team talk about their "blended future" world, but the world they describe is just purely Chinese in every regard except that some signs are in English and the actors eat Hamburgers sometimes. Imagine the creative team saying "oh, but how could we include an American actor in this show? How would we even do that? How could we tell stories that reflect an American experience?? They would stick out like a sore thumb. It would inevitably be stereotyping. We might as well not even try."

You and I could immediately point out dozens of ways they could include genuine American cultural influences in their show.

[gbaji]

In a perfect world, I'd have preferred a Firefly where there were some Asian-American writers in the writers' room, and some Asian-American actors onscreen, creating a show that both looks and "feels" like it has Asian influences. In a "good enough" world, I would've settled for Caucasian writers and some Asian-American actors, preferably in main or recurring character roles. But the lack of Asian-American actors anywhere in the show is almost laughably noticeable, once you're looking for it.

Why are you looking for it? I guess what I'm trying to get at is this idea (which you seem to be expressing, but please correct me if I'm wrong) that a non-asian looking person can't possibly reflect or represent asian influences and culture. To me that's an incredibly narrow view of culture and also possibly exactly what the writers of the show were trying to avoid.

The point of their future blended culture is that "folks that look exactly like people in modern America will adopt and use asian cultural influences in their day to day lives, and think nothing of it, and it having nothing to do with their ethnic appearance or backround". By *not* putting Asian looking actors on the screen, they succeed at this. If they had put Asian looking actors in prominent positions on the screen, it would have stepped on the very message they were trying to get across.

No. Of course I don't want Asian stereotypes. I said "some Asian voices on this creative team would've been nice" and you reacted as if the only way to do that was with stereotypes.

They did, in fact, use a lot of Asian consultants to get the slang and cultural bits right in the show. They talk about this in the various behind the scenes bits in the boxed set. In fact, they specifically spoke to people who were not traditional cultural and linguistic experts, but rather directly to people living in various regions who spoke Mandarin natively, and asked them for specific modern slang to use in the show. That's likely why many hear it and go "what?". It's not what you'd be taught to speak in a classroom. Which, again, was the entire point (that and the actors butchered the heck out of slang that was already intended to not be super mainstream to start with, but hey, let's assume some linguistic drift in 500 years, right?).

This isn't real. You invented this binary choice. Here's a third option:

3. Include the "other" culture in your writer's room and in the cast. Allow them to bring stories from their upbringing, culture, and historical background into the story you're telling, then work with them to find ways to relate that experience with your "main" audience's culture.

My two listed options were for about how this is portrayed on the screen, not what you do behind the scenes. What you just described above could result in either of the two portrayals I described previously. It's not a real alternative.

Again. If we assume that "culture" is not the same as "ethnicity", that is.

I genuinely can't understand why you cling to this binary choice of "remove Asians entirely" or "only do Asian stereotypes." Is that what "representation" is to you? Stereotype?

Again. Is it only possible to show Asian culture if we include ethnically Asian actors? I may be getting your complaint wrong, but it seems like whenever we get down to details, it's not the cultural aspects that are missing and you are complaining about, but the literal "faces" of the actors on the screen.

You insist that there's no push towards cultural/ethnic balkanization behind your position, but at every turn it seems as though you are saying "only asian actors can portray asian culture". Which is exactly the balkanization I'm talking about. But when I point this out, you insist you aren't talking about that, but then turn right around and talk about the fact that there were no asian actors or prominent crew.

My point is that you are not the only person who makes this association. The same association you are making that "asian actors missing means that asian culture is missing" will force "asian actor" to represent "asian culture" on the show, once cast. You *can* fight against this, but it's going to be a freaking uphill battle to do so, and you will come under constant pressure to "comply" with the stereotypes. I can't speak to the thought process of the folks behind the show, but I can speculate that maybe they wanted to avoid this, and that's what lead to them not casting any asian actors in the show. Or it could just have come down to unrelated casting decisions, and the specific ethnicity of the actors didn't enter into the equation.

I guess the question is why it matters more to you what the ethnicity of the actors is, than it apparently maybe mattered to the folks producing the show?

Flip the script here. Imagine how strange a similar conversation would sound to a Westerner who's listening to a Chinese creative team talk about their "blended future" world, but the world they describe is just purely Chinese in every regard except that some signs are in English and the actors eat Hamburgers sometimes. Imagine the creative team saying "oh, but how could we include an American actor in this show? How would we even do that? How could we tell stories that reflect an American experience?? They would stick out like a sore thumb. It would inevitably be stereotyping. We might as well not even try."

You and I could immediately point out dozens of ways they could include genuine American cultural influences in their show.

I'd have no problems with it at all. I'd full expect that a Chinese show, with an intended Chinese audience, could absolutely show American culture and influence and not at all expect any of the cast to be American to do so. And yeah. Showing the Chinese characters eating at McDonalds, wearing Nike shoes, and a whole host of other "western infliuences" is more than sufficient to show a blended culture. Um... You get that this is actually exactly what things are actually like in a lot of Asian countries right now, in the real world, right?

Want to know what a blended culture looks like? Go hang out in Singapore. Note the perponderance of Asian looking people. Note also the preponderance of English language signs all over the place. Note that if you decide to have a burger at the local Carls Junior, the main difference is that you'll get chili sauce instead of ketchup with your fries (yes, I'm not kidding!). Oddly enough, I didn't at all find it odd that there weren't a sufficiently large percentage of western people eating at the western restaurants while I was there. Nor did I complain that those asian looking kids were all sporting American jeans, and wearing American sneakers. Shocking!

It's almost like the writers/producers of Firefly knew exactly what it would look like if we really did this in reverse. So yeah. I had no problem at all with their portrayal of things.

[Ionathus]

Feels like we're going back and forth on the same points. Our worldviews seem pretty different and I don't think we're going to agree, which I can live with. Happy to keep talking about it, though!

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this idea that a non-asian looking person can't possibly reflect or represent asian influences and culture

A non-Asian person can explore and write Asian-influenced stories. I'm pretty sure either most or all of the Avatar: The Last Airbender showrunners and writers were non-Asian, yet their creation gets a lot of praise from Asian-American audiences (at least as far as I can tell, the majority of criticism seems positive).

However, A:TLA also incorporated East Asian philosophy and cultural expectations. Zuko's fixation on regaining his honor, Aang's commitment to pacifism. Elements of spirituality that I probably shouldn't go into on this forum. These are topics that aren't as important to Western audiences because of cultural norms, but they got the focus in this show. The world didn't just have a veneer of visual Asian styles -- its storytelling was informed by it.

Firefly never had that for me. All of the stories and conflict feel very comfortably Western: rebelling against authority, prioritizing personal freedoms, the mercenary "cowboy" plot structure where they wander from town to town. All very familiar Western values and concepts.

The point of their future blended culture is that "folks that look exactly like people in modern America will adopt and use asian cultural influences in their day to day lives, and think nothing of it, and it having nothing to do with their ethnic appearance or backround". By *not* putting Asian looking actors on the screen, they succeed at this. If they had put Asian looking actors in prominent positions on the screen, it would have stepped on the very message they were trying to get across.

This is a very weird claim to me. I agree that it's cool to see non-Asians interacting with Asian influences and not making a big deal out of it, but I don't see how adding Asian actors would cheapen that. You'd get more of that "casually multicultural" thing you're going for: say, for example, that Mal stays Caucasian and his old war buddy from the second Saffron episode is cast as Asian, and they chat amicably while switching between English and Mandarin like a lot of multilingual speakers do. If anything it would make the multicultural blending more apparent.

And in case you say that friendships don't count or that having it be an old war buddy somehow cheapens it, well, you can do the same with a random town's mayor, or an antagonist, or another member of the crew. Mal getting snarky in English with one member of the crew, then turning to another character to talk business in Mandarin like it's nothing, then turning back to continue the conversation in English -- that's more multicultural than what we got, while being just as nonchalant.

Again. Is it only possible to show Asian culture if we include ethnically Asian actors? I may be getting your complaint wrong, but it seems like whenever we get down to details, it's not the cultural aspects that are missing and you are complaining about, but the literal "faces" of the actors on the screen.

It's both. I already talked about the cultural aspects above when mentioning Avatar (and earlier upthread, multiple times). Firefly is a Western show, with Western values. I can't name an influence it takes from East Asian philosophy, history, or cultural expectations, beyond superficial elements like names, cuisine, and translated slang swear words.

As for the other point, about "faces:"

at every turn it seems as though you are saying "only asian actors can portray asian culture".

I'm of the opinion that only Asian actors can portray Asian characters, if you're going for visual realism. And the lore of Firefly is that "half of the 'Verse's colonists were from China." The other half of the colonists were American, and we see plenty of Caucasian and African-American people in the cast that supports that half of the claim. So where's the Chinese half of the gene pool? Certainly not on display in the core cast, or on any of the outer rim worlds, or even on Ariel which is a centralized Alliance planet.

Sure, you could technically tell a story about Asian influences in a Western world. I suggested one such story upthread (e.g. China and America set out for the new system, but due to a "civil war" most of the survivors were American, piloting Chinese ships). But that's not the backstory of Firefly. Firefly's world claims to be half Asian in its ethnicity. So why does it look like only Americans survived the jump?

My point is that you are not the only person who makes this association. The same association you are making that "asian actors missing means that asian culture is missing" will force "asian actor" to represent "asian culture" on the show, once cast. You *can* fight against this, but it's going to be a freaking uphill battle to do so, and you will come under constant pressure to "comply" with the stereotypes.

I've seen this argument before. "It's hard to include non-Western ethnicities, and we might mess it up, so it's better to avoid the issue entirely." I encourage you to let go of this mentality. Stereotypes are not inevitable. It's always worth trying for representation if that's the story you want to tell.

One of the advantages of including Asian writers and actors in your Asian-inspired world is that they will be able to tell you what feels like representation to them and what feels like stereotype. In fact, I would make the outrageous claim that an Asian audience is a better judge of whether they're being stereotyped than a non-Asian creator. You will get a range of perspectives and opinions, and you shouldn't make one person speak on behalf of their entire culture. But even one voice from the culture/ethnicity you're depicting is better than zero.