Dune II

[KorvinStarmast]

He will betray and destroy a 10,000 year tradition for he has the freedom to do so and force everyone in the universe to bend to his whims or die to his army or economic die due not being able to space travel.

Which, hilariously, is what the Bene Gesserit were looking for: someone that unique, the result of their millennia long breeding program aka genetic manipulation scheme.


Be careful of what you wish for, as you are sure to get it.

[pendell]

Well, I think that Dune is exploring and using a more fuedal "war of the roses" style setting and concept. While Firefly is more of an "antibellum south" bit.

"Ante bellum" is "Before the war". "Gone with the Wind" or "Song of the South" are antebellum movies which romanticize 19th century southern plantation society.

Firefly is more like the post-civil war outlaws like Jesse James . During the Civil War, there were irregular guerrillas on both sides in addition to the more conventional armies. Some of the people in those guerrilla armies, such as Quantrill's Raiders, lit out for the western territories rather than live in the South during reconstruction. And a few of them never really learned to live peaceable lives and continued their guerilla activities as bandits, outlaws. It's very similar to the pirates of the 17th century Caribbean , many of whom got their start as privateers during war time but found they didn't know how to do anything else, so turned to plundering ships of all nations during peace time.

They were, of course, eventually brought to heel, either through amnesty or through hanging.

Firefly romanticizes the old school outlaws, stripping out everything that made them seriously objectionable in the real world. Mal and his team are more like Robin Hoods fighting a heroic resistance against a well-meaning but corrupt and oppressive government. I liked -- and still love -- the Firefly show even as I utterly detested the antebellum movies. Even as an eight-year-old, I was rooting for Sherman to burn down Atlanta and put the protaganists, who lived lives of luxury on the back of other people, to flight.

... If I had to analyze, it I would guess it's because Firefly punches up; they are poor characters facing off with an oppressive government and you can't help feel a little sympathetic for them. Gone With the Wind punches down, and there's nothing really likeable about that.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Ramza00]

I was under the impression that the decision to marry the Emperor to a Bene Gesserit (Anirul, Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank), and then deny him sons, giving him only daughters (the oldest being Irulan) was catalysed by the fact that their Kwisatz Haderach program was so close to completion.

And that prior to this the Bene Gesserit weren't always the Imperial spouses - Irulan was supposed to be the first Bene Gesserit Empress to take the throne itself, and married off to the Kwisatz Haderach. And, being so much older than him (he was supposed to be the grandson of Jessica), able to control him.

With Jessica's having him one generation early, interfering with the plan.

Irulan's description doesn't make it sound like it's something that happens with every Emperor:

we are pretty much in agreement with the direction we may different a little on the details and how to name the details

and I am not going to investigate deeply further with higher amounts of rigor for this is fiction we are talking about.

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Like you already said (and I agree with you) Irulan’s momma, the previous empress Anirul is also a Bene Gesserit and she had enough bio control and ideology connected to the BG that she agrees with their plans, to have 5 kids all girls with the goal that this would force the emperor to then marry his daughters to who the BG want them to marry. And eventually the Kwisatz Haderach would be on the throne.

But the BG is larger than this individual thread, they do the BG program as a participatiory force but some religion idea (they use taoism as the metaphor) of not being “seen” as an active power for that will produce a rivilary and the emperor will kill you. Yet you are still participating and shaping the universe, just no tall poppy syndrome as a metaphor instead being focused in being in the room where it happens and using more subtle means of control and manipulation.

Thus BG will train all royal house daughters, and this is the “currency” they use to be part of a larger system, and once part of the larger system they have influence to help shape events. The BGs are merely Courtesan trainers / Courtiers … for Peter Sake , well in Latin is the word Bene , behaved in Latin is the word Gesserit ( though how you cognate the two words side by side is a little off from english to latin, it is a bad translation but close enough )

But there are higher levels of BG , much like a skill tree in Skyrim so learning all the sisterhood could teach you and being a high enough level the system thinks you are likely to survive the spice agony trial. Well not all rich peoples daughters are like that.

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Thus it is special that Anirul was as talented as Lady Jessica to have enough body control to determine the sex of the baby, yet also did not likely do the spice agony. Have the empress be too high of rank and she may make the emperor paranoid, too low of rank and it would be an insult, best keep the rank hidden and create a whole custom system where not even the emperor could know the currency he was being sold and had no way to evaluate it himself and know the validation method to be truthful.

( Dune the series as books is kind of paranoid, no wonder why Paul once he had access to his momma and dad’s ancestors he would become more paranoid for he could now see the multi generation plot and all the double fears where you have to do it just right not too hot not too cold not too yang not too yin. All the ancestors who wanted the prize of emperor had to sail between two islands and get to close to one and you may die. Infinite ancestor paranoia ! )

[KorvinStarmast]

Infinite ancestor paranoia ! )

That's the name of my next album.

[Eldan]

Is Irulan's mother really called Anirul? Because that's astoundingly silly.

[hamishspence]

Is Irulan's mother really called Anirul? Because that's astoundingly silly.

Yup - in the appendix to the first novel:

SHADDAM IV (10,134-10,202)

The Padishah Emperor, 81st of his line (House Corrino) to occupy the Golden Lion Throne, reigned from 10,156 (date his father, Elrood IX, succumbed to chaumurky) until replaced by the 10,196 Regency set up in the name of his eldest daughter, Irulan. His reign is noted chiefly for the Arrakis Revolt, blamed by many historians on Shaddam IV's dalliance with Court functions and the pomp of office. The ranks of Bursegs were doubled in the first sixteen years of his reign. Appropriations for Sardaukar training went down steadily in the final thirty years before the Arrakis Revolt. He had five daughters (Irulan, Chalice, Wensicia, Josifa, and Rugi) and no legal sons. Four of the daughters accompanied him into retirement. His wife, Anirul, a Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank, died in 10,176.

the date of birth for Shaddam isn't consistent though with Irulan's statement that he was 72 when Arrakis was retaken by the Harkonnens. That's probably why Brian Herbert retconned it into being 10,119, to match Irulan's statement. For that matter the date of death isn't consistent with him still being around in Dune Messiah 12 years later.

[KorvinStarmast]

Best to get Dune III set up, approved, and funded so that the actors can fit it into their schedules ...

Director Denis Villeneuve confirmed at the 2021 Venice Film Festival prior to the debut of his theatrical adaptation of Dune that a film based on Dune Messiah was planned, and it would serve as the third film in a trilogy.[10] After Dune: Part Two (covering the second half of the first novel) was officially greenlit in October 2021, Villeneuve reiterated his hope to continue the series with a third film focusing on Dune Messiah.[11][12] Screenwriter Jon Spaihts confirmed in March 2022 that Villeneuve still plans on a third film, and TV series spin-offs to continue the Dune saga.[13] Villeneuve began writing a script for a Dune Messiah film in 2023.[14] In February 2024, Villeneuve said the script was "almost finished" but also said he "[doesn't] want to rush it," citing Hollywood's tendency of focusing on release dates over a film's overall quality.[15] Composer Hans Zimmer had already begun working on the film's score to assist Villeneuve in creating the film.

The sources:

Spoiler: what supports the above teaser about Dune III

Show

10 Casey, Dan (September 3, 2021). "Dune Director Denis Villeneuve Teases Trilogy Plans". Nerdist. Retrieved September 3, 2021.
11 Davids, Brian (October 28, 2021). "Denis Villeneuve on Dune Success and the Road to Part Two". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 28, 2021.
12 Jolin, Dan (January 10, 2022). "Denis Villeneuve talks 'taxing' Dune shoot, identifying with Paul Atreides, sequel plans". Screendaily.com. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
13 Ellwood, Gregory (March 10, 2022). "Jon Spaihts on a Potential Dune Trilogy & Collaborating With Park Chan-Wook [Interview]". ThePlaylist.net. Retrieved March 11, 2022.
14 Zacharek, Stephanie (31 January 2024). "Denis Villeneuve Refuses to Let Hollywood Shrink Him Down to Size". Time. Retrieved 3 February 2024.
15 Bythrow, Nick (2024-02-26). ""The Danger In Hollywood": Dune 3's Release Delay Plan Defended By Denis Villeneuve". ScreenRant. Retrieved 2024-02-29.

[gbaji]

I was under the impression that the decision to marry the Emperor to a Bene Gesserit (Anirul, Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank), and then deny him sons, giving him only daughters (the oldest being Irulan) was catalysed by the fact that their Kwisatz Haderach program was so close to completion.

And that prior to this the Bene Gesserit weren't always the Imperial spouses - Irulan was supposed to be the first Bene Gesserit Empress to take the throne itself, and married off to the Kwisatz Haderach. And, being so much older than him (he was supposed to be the grandson of Jessica), able to control him.

With Jessica's having him one generation early, interfering with the plan.

That meshes with my memory (suppose I could go look, but lazy). Jessica was supposed to bear a female heir, instead of the male Paul. That female was supposd to marry Feyd (the other side of the lineage which the BG were manipulating), and the pairing would result in the Kwisatz Haderach, who was to be male but with the powers needed to see into <insert mumbo jumbo here> and to marry Irulan, who would be "guiding" him.

Jessica basically screwed their plans by having a son instead. And, as it happened, Paul was able to access many of the powers that they were intending for their superhuman messiah figure to have (unclear if all though). It's also unclear if Feyd, had he spent the same time on Arrakis (spice exposure) as Paul, would/could have also manifested siimlar powers. Possibly not though, since I think the two "sides" of the equation were specifically breed for different aspects, and Paul's was supposed to be the female "side", so despite being male was able to do the same sorts of things, but will the... er... male attributes involved? Yeah, that whole bit was always fuzzy to me too.

But regardless, because Paul was unplanned, and because he was able to manifest "enough" powers to see what was going on, he then actively threw a wrench into everything as well. And to be fair, given the reaction by the BG and through them the Emperor and Harkonnen's, he kinda didn't have a lot of choice but to do what he did.

"Ante bellum" is "Before the war". "Gone with the Wind" or "Song of the South" are antebellum movies which romanticize 19th century southern plantation society.

Bah! Yup. Miswrote that. Obviously, I meant "post" war.

Firefly romanticizes the old school outlaws, stripping out everything that made them seriously objectionable in the real world. Mal and his team are more like Robin Hoods fighting a heroic resistance against a well-meaning but corrupt and oppressive government. I liked -- and still love -- the Firefly show even as I utterly detested the antebellum movies. Even as an eight-year-old, I was rooting for Sherman to burn down Atlanta and put the protaganists, who lived lives of luxury on the back of other people, to flight.

... If I had to analyze, it I would guess it's because Firefly punches up; they are poor characters facing off with an oppressive government and you can't help feel a little sympathetic for them. Gone With the Wind punches down, and there's nothing really likeable about that.

Yeah. That's kinda where I was going with that. The thought experiment is "if we take away that one aspect of the south (same bits you dislike about antebellum period), but otherwise left the social, political, and economic issues/conflicts intact, do we still have justification for a conflict of the same/similar scale, and how do we feel about the different parties involved?". What if the conflict was literally just about one side being on the better side of an otherwise geographically imposed trade cycle, and thus got more and more powerful and wealthy and advanced, while the other got progressively more poor and used? The core worlds control all of the industry, development, and production, and the outer worlds are pretty much simple folks, living off the land, generating vast amounts of raw materials and goods, but with little ability to do anything with it themselves (eternal colonists, sending their materials back home at pennies a pound, while buying finished goods at 10x the price).

And yeah. Does that create the same sort of renegades and bandits, and how exactly do they fit in? It's a great background for a crew like on the Sernity. People who are technically outlaws engaged in illegal actions, but who have (for the most part) a strong sense of morals and values, and with whom the audience strongly associates despite their "we aim to misbehave" attitude.

[Tyndmyr]

Jessica basically screwed their plans by having a son instead. And, as it happened, Paul was able to access many of the powers that they were intending for their superhuman messiah figure to have (unclear if all though). It's also unclear if Feyd, had he spent the same time on Arrakis (spice exposure) as Paul, would/could have also manifested siimlar powers. Possibly not though, since I think the two "sides" of the equation were specifically breed for different aspects, and Paul's was supposed to be the female "side", so despite being male was able to do the same sorts of things, but will the... er... male attributes involved? Yeah, that whole bit was always fuzzy to me too.

Yeah, it's not exceedingly clear to me why the women feared to look at the male history, but a man could look at both. Sort of author word at that point, and without it, the whole plot doesn't really make sense, so it's a necessary bit of handwavium, but it isn't really justified in any way. *shrug*

I like the politics rather more than the god-breeding, even if the latter is highly relevant to the former.

[Ionathus]

I was overly diplomatic in my first statement about Firefly and it's been bothering me. Here's take two.

In terms of worldbuilding, I don't think Firefly deserves comparison to Dune. I like Firefly a lot, but mostly because of its dialogue, acting, visuals, and tone. Its world and lore have always felt shallow, like they were developed in service to the storytelling rather than really informing the story being told.

Worldbuilding is hard to qualify₁ and I don't want to force an arbitrary definition. But I can't point to many things in Firefly that make it more distinctive than "Cowboys In Space". The major conflicts are almost exclusively personal, and the factions & their "politics" are barely explored. The poor towns they visit all feel similar. Mal's war buddies too. The Alliance is all just generic oppressive authoritarians -- except for the Hands of Blue men and the bounty hunter. But they don't inform or explore much else about their setting, allegiances, or influences: they're mostly a character success than a worldbuilding one. The Reavers are probably the most unique thing about the show, and I know Serenity indicates that they were building to something bigger there. But overall, it's not very robust worldbuilding at all.

Compare that to Dune, which has numerous clearly-defined groups of people with unique desires, resources, and vulnerabilities. The setting doesn't just set up a justification for the story Herbert wanted to tell: the facts of his world clearly influence how the story plays out. It feels like a plausible reality I can get invested in even without the characters carrying my interest, with unique dynamics and implications I can think about and "chew on".

EDIT: Come to think of it, that might be the best definition of "good" worldbuilding I can come up with: "Would I care about this setting even without these characters/story?" Without Mal, Zoe, and the rest...there's not much unique that draws me to the world of Firefly.

1. There was a debate in The Book Thread about The Locked Tomb on this topic, since that series doesn't prominently feature the classic "logistics" style worldbuilding of politics, geography, logistics, economics -- logistics that books like Dune are deeply informed by. But to me, TLT's setting still feels intensely unique and flavorful thanks to other storytelling choices and breadcrumb details. My complaint about Firefly's setting is that it doesn't do much of either approach.

[gbaji]

Worldbuilding is hard to qualify₁ and I don't want to force an arbitrary definition. But I can't point to many things in Firefly that make it more distinctive than "Cowboys In Space". The major conflicts are almost exclusively personal, and the factions & their "politics" are barely explored. The poor towns they visit all feel similar. Mal's war buddies too. The Alliance is all just generic oppressive authoritarians -- except for the Hands of Blue men and the bounty hunter. But they don't inform or explore much else about their setting, allegiances, or influences: they're mostly a character success than a worldbuilding one. The Reavers are probably the most unique thing about the show, and I know Serenity indicates that they were building to something bigger there. But overall, it's not very robust worldbuilding at all.

Compare that to Dune, which has numerous clearly-defined groups of people with unique desires, resources, and vulnerabilities. The setting doesn't just set up a justification for the story Herbert wanted to tell: the facts of his world clearly influence how the story plays out. It feels like a plausible reality I can get invested in even without the characters carrying my interest, with unique dynamics and implications I can think about and "chew on".

They are "different", and certainly focus on different things, but I don't think that Firefly's worldbuilding is somehow "less than" simply because it doesn't focus on the political side of things. Yes. We see more defined groups in Dune. But they're all "big movers and shakers". House Atreides, House Harkonnen, the Emperor, the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, the Fremen. All key players in a galaxy-side power struggle. But we're literally only shown the things that are relevant to that struggle. It's science fiction on a grand scale.

But we see more of the ground level stuff in Firefly. I certainly saw a lot of variation in the different locations. The Mudders were nothing like the folks on Persephone, versus Patience and her moon, versus Niska and his station, etc, etc, etc. We see regular people, living regular lives. We see people in bars socializing. We see goods being transported. We see how people actually live in the world.

Again. Different. But I wouldn't necessarily say that one is better or worse worldbuilding than the other. Certainly not if we restrict ourselves to just the first book in the Dune series (Firefly only got the one short season, and one film). Later books filled in the Dune universe a heck of a lot as well, but in just the first? There's not a lot outside of Arrakis itself detailed there (and the politics of the specific stuff going on right then and there).

EDIT: Come to think of it, that might be the best definition of "good" worldbuilding I can come up with: "Would I care about this setting even without these characters/story?" Without Mal, Zoe, and the rest...there's not much unique that draws me to the world of Firefly.

Again, not sure I agree. Dune is certainly interesting even if you remove the specific conflict in the story. The use of spice is interesting and unique. And the removal of computing devices and focus on human enhancement is also interesting (as are the different factions involved in this). So there's some good stuff in there.

Firefly has some intresting stuff as well though. An entire populated system of planets and moons, by immigrants from "earth that was". The blending of east/west culture and language. The economics and politics of the colonization of these planets leading to economic disparity, leading to war, leading to where we are now.


Honestly, while I agree that Dune has more "out there" stuff in it, it's also just kinda presented as a pat "this is what's there". Spice is "just there" (and hugely significant). The reasons and purposes of the differences in human/machine uses in the setting is "just there" as well (yes, later books go into more details, but not so much in the first book). I feel like if we had 5+ seasons of Firefly to really flesh things out, your assessment might be very different. The bones of a very detailed setting were certainly laid, and were very interesting as well. Which is preciseliy why it's often listed as the best series canceled way too early. It was literally just "getting to the meat of the story" when it stops. Heck. We didn't even get a full year season, so there isn't even a complete story. So if we were really being fair, we'd compare it to just the first half of the novel Dune, and then see how they stack up.


I also think that what made Firefly so different than most sci-fi stories was the very thing you are labeling as "better worldbuilding" in Dune. It's not focused on the powerful players. They aren't flying the flagship of the Federation, or some special prototype ship with a unique jump drive, or some other "we're super special" thing. And it has an incredible blending of "wild west meets spaceships" bit, that is not super common. I get that you say it's "cowboys in space", but that usually doesn't actually include people shipping cattle in their spaceship, right?

[Ramza00]

Yeah, it's not exceedingly clear to me why the women feared to look at the male history, but a man could look at both. Sort of author word at that point, and without it, the whole plot doesn't really make sense, so it's a necessary bit of handwavium, but it isn't really justified in any way. *shrug*

I like the politics rather more than the god-breeding, even if the latter is highly relevant to the former.

It is a Jung idea and Herbert is a good enough Jungian that he bought the idea fully.

Note Freud had a similar but slightly different idea, and I actually prefer the person who they borrow it from but I am not going to elaborate it further.

Pretty much it is the destruction as a cause of being / completion of the act. Sidenote the other memory does not show the whole life of a person, but merely the life until the parents do the deed and then it ends. Thus you will have memories of a child remembering their parent from their perspective, but not the memories of a parent^{from their point of view} doing their duties and obligations like changing your diapers, or being happy at your graduation, or the parents being grandparents, and so on.


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sidenote seems like we are getting Dune 3 sometime in the years our future.

[Errorname]

In terms of worldbuilding, I don't think Firefly deserves comparison to Dune. I like Firefly a lot, but mostly because of its dialogue, acting, visuals, and tone. Its world and lore have always felt shallow, like they were developed in service to the storytelling rather than really informing the story being told.

Firefly merits the comparison because like Dune it's worldbuilding has been very influential, although obviously Dune wipes the floor with it. But still, it feels like anything even Space Western adjacent post-Firefly can trace at least a bit of ancestry directly to Firefly. That's probably part of why it feels less distinct to you, there's a lot of copycats (I think Cowboys in Space is more at home for a lot of american authors than Ottomans in Space)

The Alliance is all just generic oppressive authoritarians -- except for the Hands of Blue men and the bounty hunter. But they don't inform or explore much else about their setting, allegiances, or influences: they're mostly a character success than a worldbuilding one. The Reavers are probably the most unique thing about the show, and I know Serenity indicates that they were building to something bigger there. But overall, it's not very robust worldbuilding at all.

I think part of this is an effect of the early cancellation. There are things which feel like hooks for future development but which get cut short because the show got canned before it was out of the first act.

Again. Different. But I wouldn't necessarily say that one is better or worse worldbuilding than the other. Certainly not if we restrict ourselves to just the first book in the Dune series (Firefly only got the one short season, and one film). Later books filled in the Dune universe a heck of a lot as well, but in just the first? There's not a lot outside of Arrakis itself detailed there (and the politics of the specific stuff going on right then and there).

Yeah, Dune is a novel about politics and ecology. It's themes are much more heavily tied into these sort of "worldbuilding" concerns. In Firefly, at least the episodes we got, politics and ecology is setting. In Dune it is story, and as such gets much more focus. "Good Worldbuilding" suits the needs of the story.

[Tyndmyr]

I was overly diplomatic in my first statement about Firefly and it's been bothering me. Here's take two.

In terms of worldbuilding, I don't think Firefly deserves comparison to Dune. I like Firefly a lot, but mostly because of its dialogue, acting, visuals, and tone. Its world and lore have always felt shallow, like they were developed in service to the storytelling rather than really informing the story being told.

There's hints of a lot of this, but...briefly. Niska is a major player, he's space based and an independent player, not part of the alliance. Badger is clearly intended as a recurring character, and Firefly is de-facto based from there for a while.

Ultimately, I think they intended to reveal a lot more of this over a longer period, and the combination of broadcasting restrictions and rapid cancellation just hurt those plans badly.

Philosophically, Niska ends up very different from the various Imperial Captains, or from Saffron, or from Burgess. For its run length, Firefly actually has quite a lot of distinctly different villains.

There was also a kind of decent board game that elaborates a little. I don't think it wholly invents anything entirely new, but it does introduce stuff like maps and things shown briefly in the show, and shows them off a bit more.

Re: Actual Dune stuff.

As for it being a Jungian idea, fair enough, the ancestral memory certainly ties in well enough with that. Didn't realize Jung was quite so, well...sexist, perhaps, but eh, art draws from all sorts of things. *shrug*

[KorvinStarmast]

As for it being a Jungian idea, fair enough, the ancestral memory certainly ties in well enough with that. Didn't realize Jung was quite so, well...sexist, perhaps, but eh, art draws from all sorts of things. *shrug*

Pretty sure that Herbert himself explained the Jungian influence on his story. (And for context, Freud and Jung were at one point contemporaries, though Jung was quite a bit younger) and the two of them had an outsized impact on psychology for nearly a century. They brought their 19th century Points of view along with them as they moved into the 20th century.

[Ramza00]

Re: Actual Dune stuff.

As for it being a Jungian idea, fair enough, the ancestral memory certainly ties in well enough with that. Didn't realize Jung was quite so, well...sexist, perhaps, but eh, art draws from all sorts of things. *shrug*

Pretty sure that Herbert himself explained the Jungian influence on his story. (And for context, Freud and Jung were at one point contemporaries, though Jung was quite a bit younger) and the two of them had an outsized impact on psychology for nearly a century. They brought their 19th century Points of view along with them as they moved into the 20th century.

*laughs*

This was the not going to elaborate further stuff, for I am not going to talk Dr. Sabina Spielrein here on the forums and how she is awesome and incredible, but also how sexist society was in 1905 to 1912. And I am skipping over all the 1905 to 1912 stuff with her and med school, Jung, Freud, their bromance breaking up, etc. I am skipping how she got into the tradition and how she instantly got better once Eugen Bleuler a third famous psychoanalysis founders did some legal documents preventing a male abuser who was family from seeing here (aka the subject that was being talked about)

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Yes all three (far less Sabina) are going to sound archaic and from the 1800s not the 2020s or the 1950s and 60s when dune was being written. That said Sabina kind of helped Freud re-alter the direction of his work from the 1910s to 1920s (less sex stuff more society is intergenerational and social not just the sec stuff, Jung went in the opposite direction looking for universal story tropes and archetypes. stuff we would later call the Heroes Journey which is not Jung but Joseph Campbell but Campbell was a Jung Scholar. and Herbert is critiquing this Campbell like idea of a messiah / hero.)

and how Sabina became a therapist and researcher in her own right and how her stuff after 1920 is all child development stuff (she worked at Jean Piaget ‘s clinic as a coworker but also was his therapist, and then her family moved again so then teaches the other giant in the field Lev Vygotsky as his teacher in Russia / USSR.) We are only now seeing how much Sabina influenced the field for she died a horrible death, as millions others did due to world war 2, and people starting looking at her diaries and papers in the 1970s and 1990s for she wrote so much down but they were just stored in a closet that others later discovers. Sabina being one of the hidden mothers of this tradition and actually the origin of many ideas. It is not just Anna Freud and Melanie Klein in the 1920s as the founders of the feminine influence of this tradition.

If you want more info on this, which is only like 30% of the reason Jung and Freud did a messy break up (not the only reason for Freud and Jung are mess), the podcast Ordinary Unhappiness (two historians of the field) did a movie review of the Kiera Knightly movie , 2011 A Dangerous Method which is based off the 1993 Nonfiction Book of the same name, but we also know far more than the 1990s and these historians will talk about the other things Sabina did.

https://ordinaryunhappiness.buzzspro...ung-otto-gross

( not going to talk about it, then I write 4 paragraphs in a dune thread, *laughs* )

[KorvinStarmast]

*laughs*

This was the not going to elaborate further stuff,

I recall reading that Joseph Campbell (who took the Jungian approach) also informed Herbert's muse.

[Ionathus]

Thanks for your reply! I appreciate the depth of your response and have gone overboard in responding in kind

Spoiler: response

Show

They are "different", and certainly focus on different things, but I don't think that Firefly's worldbuilding is somehow "less than" simply because it doesn't focus on the political side of things. Yes. We see more defined groups in Dune. But they're all "big movers and shakers". House Atreides, House Harkonnen, the Emperor, the Guild, the Bene Gesserit, the Fremen. All key players in a galaxy-side power struggle. But we're literally only shown the things that are relevant to that struggle. It's science fiction on a grand scale.

But we see more of the ground level stuff in Firefly. I certainly saw a lot of variation in the different locations. The Mudders were nothing like the folks on Persephone, versus Patience and her moon, versus Niska and his station, etc, etc, etc. We see regular people, living regular lives. We see people in bars socializing. We see goods being transported. We see how people actually live in the world.

Again. Different. But I wouldn't necessarily say that one is better or worse worldbuilding than the other.

Not sure I agree about Dune being purely grand-scale. My strongest memory from my first read is a very ground-level scene with Shadout Mapes, where the crysknife can't be sheathed unbloodied, and then Mapes's ceremonial cut clots really fast. It's just a short interaction, with very little of the "grand scale politics" going on, but the little details add a ton to the world. You see the Fremen ritualistic reverence for their knives and customs, and how their physiology has adapted to Desert Planet. Somebody pointing out to Paul how the trees in the palace require [XYZ] humans' allotment of water, and the message that sends to commoners, is another memorable example for me.

I struggle to list a lot of comparable examples like this from Firefly. The team's immediate, visceral reaction to Reavers is the best one, and I know they were planning to do more with that in future seasons. The characters swearing in Chinese is...well, I'll get to that later. It's something unique, at least. The team finding the "gold bars" in the pilot like it's a jackpot and then revealing that they were stoked about rations is pretty cool. Inara's role as a Companion is pretty interesting, and it gives her some diplomatic options. Honestly, thinking about it now, Inara gets some of the best worldbuilding scenes of the show. I wanted more of that stuff. So much of Firefly's world felt like you could edit out the spaceship scenes and it would pass as a bog-standard western, albeit with quite memorable characters.

(Firefly only got the one short season, and one film).

That's a good point: Firefly got much, much less time to build than even the first Dune book alone. But I did account for that quantity difference when I made my judgment. Much like a work with good writing, it doesn't take long to become apparent. For example, basically every scene in Severance is dripping with moments of exposition or visual cues that make the world feel deeply unique. Great worldbuilding shines through organically in every scene. And again, Firefly's writing was delightful and it helped me get to know the characters really well, but it threw barely any focus on the world around them.

It's a similar case with scope. The focus of the show means we can't get quite the "grand scale" stuff that Dune covers. Nobody is the son of a duke, and they aren't living on Space Navigation Juice Planet. But you don't have to focus on the biggest movers and shakers -- again, look at Severance. The main cast's jobs are a mystery even to them, so we have no idea how important they are (are they removing swears from films, or manipulating world governments?). But they don't have to have any control over the big picture for their day-to-day to clearly demonstrate the unique world they live in. The worldbuilding potential of "sci-fi world-hopping mercenaries" is incredibly strong, and Firefly passed up an abundance of unique opportunities IMO.

Which, again, is okay. Not every work has to be an incredible feat of worldbuilding. I really, really enjoyed Firefly. Its setting does its job perfectly -- it provides enough justification for the story that the creators wanted to tell. My only complaint is about the comparison to Dune's worldbuilding. Firefly has vibrant and unique characters, and the writing is great fun. But the world around them feels like set dressing for that fun story, rather than a living, breathing thing that informs it.

Again, not sure I agree. Dune is certainly interesting even if you remove the specific conflict in the story. The use of spice is interesting and unique. And the removal of computing devices and focus on human enhancement is also interesting (as are the different factions involved in this). So there's some good stuff in there.

Firefly has some intresting stuff as well though. An entire populated system of planets and moons, by immigrants from "earth that was". The blending of east/west culture and language. The economics and politics of the colonization of these planets leading to economic disparity, leading to war, leading to where we are now.

I agree with you that Dune is compelling without the specific characters, thanks to these other factors. If my comment you're responding to here implied otherwise, that's on me.

I don't feel the same way about Firefly, though. Your third and fourth points here -- the politics & economics of surviving in fringe settlements, and the experience of troubled war veterans -- are both quite standard trappings of the western genre, and Firefly didn't do anything with these colonies/settlers that distinguished them from Western archetypes for me. The people within them might be compelling, but that felt more like storytelling and character development than worldbuilding (and I do realize that line is fuzzy, so to each their own). Someone referenced Niska: I found him immensely, immensely compelling as a villain, but I would've found him immensely compelling in a "Normal Western" for exactly the same reasons. Nothing about Niska's appeal is because of the world he inhabits -- it's entirely because of his writing and acting.

Your first point is about space colonization, and this is Firefly's greatest worldbuilding potential in my view. There's a lot of unique opportunities for space travel, especially for space mercenaries/smugglers, but we don't get a lot of it. "Out Of Gas" is quite compelling, because it drives home the scale and the loneliness of space. You get a little bit of it from the bounty hunter episode too -- the feeling of being stalked by a silent killer when there's nobody anywhere nearby who could help you. Those moments felt unique. Most other episodes felt like "here's a small prairie town with a locally-focused conflict, which we just happened to visit in a spaceship rather than a wagon train."

Finally, your second point mentions the "blending of east/west culture and language", which I'm trying very hard not to reference sarcastically. I don't think Firefly deserves any credit whatsoever for claiming that half its universe is Asian-influenced: they certainly didn't do anything to show their work. We don't see any Asian actors, any non-Western cultural or political influences, or any Asian-inspired storylines. We get a few Mandarin-written signs in the background. Maybe the Companions are meant to apply here...? I've seen people claim the Companions' Guild acts as a sort of Space Geisha organization, which is debatable and kind of gross if intended (since Wikipedia tells me that Geishas were not, in fact, "just fancy prostitutes" as Western visitors believed). If Companions were intended that way, it's not great that the only major one we see is Caucasian...though to be fair, if the only Asian main character in the cast had also been a Fancy Space Prostitute, I think that would've been even worse.

The only thing that really supports Firefly's "East/West blend" worldbuilding claim is the translated swears the (all Western) actors use, and many of them are really cheesy and don't work at all in the dialogue. They don't sound like "we all know Chinese so we dip into it when we're worked up" -- they sound like a tourist trying and failing to show off. My wife laughed audibly at most of them when I showed her the series. If I remember correctly, she thought only Inara and Kaylee managed to make it sound convincing and natural. You could tell me that they invented the whole "only America and China escaped Earth That Was" backstory purely for the chance to sneak translated swears past the censor and I'd believe you.

I'm particularly annoyed by this aspect of the Firefly world. It's held up as so unique and interesting, but they never did anything actually unique or interesting with it. And unlike my other complaints, this isn't an element that can be justified as "they only got half of 1 season." If half your world is Asian, then half your world should be Asian. From the first episode. In dialogue, in casting, in storytelling, in visual aesthetics. How cool and unique would the series have been if it was co-written by an American and a Chinese writer, if it had featured a multicultural cast, if it had really explored the implied backstory of a Second Space Race?

Multicultural storytelling isn't having your white actors use Chinese swears. Of all the possible directions you could've gone with that prompt, "Chinese swears" was the laziest choice. This one still gets me pretty miffed.

Honestly, while I agree that Dune has more "out there" stuff in it, it's also just kinda presented as a pat "this is what's there". Spice is "just there" (and hugely significant). The reasons and purposes of the differences in human/machine uses in the setting is "just there" as well (yes, later books go into more details, but not so much in the first book).

Hard disagree. Spice isn't just a MacGuffin -- Paul's exposure to it starts triggering visions and prophetic experiences. It's no accident that the more he gets exposed to spice -- the thing the entire universe desperately needs -- the more he feels the weight of his prophesied future bearing down on him. Paul is shackled by spice just like the navigator's guild is, albeit conceptually rather than logistically. It's the same for humans taking the roles of machines -- I only ever read the first book, and that felt like a highly important feature of the world that informed the story. You say that it becomes more important in future books but I've only read the original novel, and I felt it was plenty relevant.

I feel like if we had 5+ seasons of Firefly to really flesh things out, your assessment might be very different. The bones of a very detailed setting were certainly laid, and were very interesting as well. Which is preciseliy why it's often listed as the best series canceled way too early. It was literally just "getting to the meat of the story" when it stops. Heck. We didn't even get a full year season, so there isn't even a complete story. So if we were really being fair, we'd compare it to just the first half of the novel Dune, and then see how they stack up.

I don't think a TV series needs 5 seasons to flesh out its worldbuilding. I don't think a book needs its entire pagecount. The best works can do it in a chapter or a single scene. The Hobbit is suffused with unique charm from the first few paragraphs. Ditto for Good Omens, or the Riddle-Master trilogy. The first podcast episode of Welcome To Night Vale sets a very clear tone, as do the opening scenes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Granted, some of these have the benefit of immensely different worlds (almost to the point of surreal in cases like Night Vale), but "space western" shares that fertile ground and thus has no excuse. The plot, the politics, and the logistics don't even matter; it's all about whether the behavior and dialogue of the characters can offer you a clear insight into a unique world, and whether that draws you in asking more questions. Who are these people? What are they doing? Why do they care about seemingly inconsequential things like X, Y, and Z? In the stories I mentioned as example, I wanted the answers to those questions. In Firefly, I saw the first few scenes and didn't come away with questions about the world, outside of a vague good-spirited interest in watching more.

You said compare to Dune's first half: I'll do you one better and compare to its first chapter. Right at the start, we get the gom jabbar, the pain box, someone using The Voice, and the Bene Gesserit litany against fear. We get to see Paul's and Jessica's interactions, knowing that he's the "illegitimate" son of a Duke by modern American standards but nobody treats him that way. Even stripping away all of the big-picture dialogue about imperial politics, this single scene gives an abundance of clues and hints to what this world is like, what we can expect, and what we should be wondering about. It's truly unique and compelling, in ways that feel like they'll become important, right from the get-go.

I also think that what made Firefly so different than most sci-fi stories was the very thing you are labeling as "better worldbuilding" in Dune. It's not focused on the powerful players. They aren't flying the flagship of the Federation, or some special prototype ship with a unique jump drive, or some other "we're super special" thing. And it has an incredible blending of "wild west meets spaceships" bit, that is not super common. I get that you say it's "cowboys in space", but that usually doesn't actually include people shipping cattle in their spaceship, right?

Yeah, not just focusing on the "power players" is a good call. I disagree that Dune exclusively focuses on royalty (given that the scene I still remember the most clearly a decade later is with Mapes, the housekeeper), but I agree with you that focusing on the common people is an excellent way to give flavor for the day-to-day life in your constructed world.

To go back to my earlier point, Severance IMO is absolutely saturated with strong worldbuilding choices and clever organic ways to communicate them. The characters there aren't in positions of power (that we know of), and even though we know their work is important to the plot and the wider world, it doesn't feel like their experience is much different from any other of the tens of thousands of other Severed workers. We don't get big-picture politics or leadership insights: we get faceless instructions or cryptic musings from the higher-ups, and the central mystery of "what the heck are we supposed to be doing in this job?" is so compelling that you don't need to expand the focus much further than that.

I'll admit that my regard for Firefly's worldbuilding dropped considerably this past year when I watched Cowboy Bebop for the first time. A lot of the things that felt "unique" about Firefly were present there, too, along with a hefty dose of intrigue and a ton more breadcrumbs. It turns out that "Space Western" was older than I thought, and there are numerous aspects of its style and world that Firefly definitely didn't originate. Bebop is an excellent example of the kind of worldbuilding choices that Firefly could have made, even from the first episode, to capitalize on its plot structure. The cast of Bebop also drift from planet to planet, taking jobs and interacting with locals, but each episode is packed with worldbuilding details that both make each location feel unique and also reveal tidbits and mysteries about the bigger world. The characters are too focused on not starving to care, but the audience gets a really exciting picture to piece together. Except for the Vicious episodes, which never interested me for even a second and feel totally tacked-on.

I'm not trying to compare the two quality-wise (I actually prefer Firefly in almost every way -- as an actual show I think it's a lot more enjoyable and compelling), but in terms of worldbuilding it's no contest. Cowboy Bebop is an example of exactly what you're talking about, and it makes far more of its premise in terms of worldbuilding than Firefly ever did...even with basically the same amount of total runtime.

Firefly didn't focus on the major political shifts of its society, which is totally fine by me -- in fact, I usually speak out against the strict definition of sci-fi worldbuilding as "politics, economics, logistics, and religion" that Dune more or less codified -- but in my opinion, it also didn't focus on the little stuff. That's where I think it falls short. Outside of the gasps of unique detail like Reavers, Firefly just feels like a regular Western where the heroes occasionally fly a spaceship.

Which does nothing to diminish how much I like the series, to be clear. It's a favorite of mine. I don't believe every work of sci-fi or fantasy needs a deep sense of worldbuilding. Creators frequently over-invest in worldbuilding and the story suffers for it. It's not a failing to not accomplish something that you didn't set out to do, and I've never believed that Firefly's creators were out to build a crazy-unique, compelling, living world. I believe they were out to craft a good story. And they did that, quite well.

Standard disclaimer: my response length and intensity is because this is a super interesting discussion to me. If I'm coming off aggressive please let me know because it's definitely not intended.

[gbaji]

Thanks for your reply! I appreciate the depth of your response and have gone overboard in responding in kind

Spoiler: response

Show

Not sure I agree about Dune being purely grand-scale. My strongest memory from my first read is a very ground-level scene with Shadout Mapes, where the crysknife can't be sheathed unbloodied, and then Mapes's ceremonial cut clots really fast. It's just a short interaction, with very little of the "grand scale politics" going on, but the little details add a ton to the world. You see the Fremen ritualistic reverence for their knives and customs, and how their physiology has adapted to Desert Planet. Somebody pointing out to Paul how the trees in the palace require [XYZ] humans' allotment of water, and the message that sends to commoners, is another memorable example for me.

I struggle to list a lot of comparable examples like this from Firefly. The team's immediate, visceral reaction to Reavers is the best one, and I know they were planning to do more with that in future seasons. The characters swearing in Chinese is...well, I'll get to that later. It's something unique, at least. The team finding the "gold bars" in the pilot like it's a jackpot and then revealing that they were stoked about rations is pretty cool. Inara's role as a Companion is pretty interesting, and it gives her some diplomatic options. Honestly, thinking about it now, Inara gets some of the best worldbuilding scenes of the show. I wanted more of that stuff. So much of Firefly's world felt like you could edit out the spaceship scenes and it would pass as a bog-standard western, albeit with quite memorable characters.



That's a good point: Firefly got much, much less time to build than even the first Dune book alone. But I did account for that quantity difference when I made my judgment. Much like a work with good writing, it doesn't take long to become apparent. For example, basically every scene in Severance is dripping with moments of exposition or visual cues that make the world feel deeply unique. Great worldbuilding shines through organically in every scene. And again, Firefly's writing was delightful and it helped me get to know the characters really well, but it threw barely any focus on the world around them.

It's a similar case with scope. The focus of the show means we can't get quite the "grand scale" stuff that Dune covers. Nobody is the son of a duke, and they aren't living on Space Navigation Juice Planet. But you don't have to focus on the biggest movers and shakers -- again, look at Severance. The main cast's jobs are a mystery even to them, so we have no idea how important they are (are they removing swears from films, or manipulating world governments?). But they don't have to have any control over the big picture for their day-to-day to clearly demonstrate the unique world they live in. The worldbuilding potential of "sci-fi world-hopping mercenaries" is incredibly strong, and Firefly passed up an abundance of unique opportunities IMO.

Which, again, is okay. Not every work has to be an incredible feat of worldbuilding. I really, really enjoyed Firefly. Its setting does its job perfectly -- it provides enough justification for the story that the creators wanted to tell. My only complaint is about the comparison to Dune's worldbuilding. Firefly has vibrant and unique characters, and the writing is great fun. But the world around them feels like set dressing for that fun story, rather than a living, breathing thing that informs it.



I agree with you that Dune is compelling without the specific characters, thanks to these other factors. If my comment you're responding to here implied otherwise, that's on me.

I don't feel the same way about Firefly, though. Your third and fourth points here -- the politics & economics of surviving in fringe settlements, and the experience of troubled war veterans -- are both quite standard trappings of the western genre, and Firefly didn't do anything with these colonies/settlers that distinguished them from Western archetypes for me. The people within them might be compelling, but that felt more like storytelling and character development than worldbuilding (and I do realize that line is fuzzy, so to each their own). Someone referenced Niska: I found him immensely, immensely compelling as a villain, but I would've found him immensely compelling in a "Normal Western" for exactly the same reasons. Nothing about Niska's appeal is because of the world he inhabits -- it's entirely because of his writing and acting.

Your first point is about space colonization, and this is Firefly's greatest worldbuilding potential in my view. There's a lot of unique opportunities for space travel, especially for space mercenaries/smugglers, but we don't get a lot of it. "Out Of Gas" is quite compelling, because it drives home the scale and the loneliness of space. You get a little bit of it from the bounty hunter episode too -- the feeling of being stalked by a silent killer when there's nobody anywhere nearby who could help you. Those moments felt unique. Most other episodes felt like "here's a small prairie town with a locally-focused conflict, which we just happened to visit in a spaceship rather than a wagon train."

Finally, your second point mentions the "blending of east/west culture and language", which I'm trying very hard not to reference sarcastically. I don't think Firefly deserves any credit whatsoever for claiming that half its universe is Asian-influenced: they certainly didn't do anything to show their work. We don't see any Asian actors, any non-Western cultural or political influences, or any Asian-inspired storylines. We get a few Mandarin-written signs in the background. Maybe the Companions are meant to apply here...? I've seen people claim the Companions' Guild acts as a sort of Space Geisha organization, which is debatable and kind of gross if intended (since Wikipedia tells me that Geishas were not, in fact, "just fancy prostitutes" as Western visitors believed). If Companions were intended that way, it's not great that the only major one we see is Caucasian...though to be fair, if the only Asian main character in the cast had also been a Fancy Space Prostitute, I think that would've been even worse.

The only thing that really supports Firefly's "East/West blend" worldbuilding claim is the translated swears the (all Western) actors use, and many of them are really cheesy and don't work at all in the dialogue. They don't sound like "we all know Chinese so we dip into it when we're worked up" -- they sound like a tourist trying and failing to show off. My wife laughed audibly at most of them when I showed her the series. If I remember correctly, she thought only Inara and Kaylee managed to make it sound convincing and natural. You could tell me that they invented the whole "only America and China escaped Earth That Was" backstory purely for the chance to sneak translated swears past the censor and I'd believe you.

I'm particularly annoyed by this aspect of the Firefly world. It's held up as so unique and interesting, but they never did anything actually unique or interesting with it. And unlike my other complaints, this isn't an element that can be justified as "they only got half of 1 season." If half your world is Asian, then half your world should be Asian. From the first episode. In dialogue, in casting, in storytelling, in visual aesthetics. How cool and unique would the series have been if it was co-written by an American and a Chinese writer, if it had featured a multicultural cast, if it had really explored the implied backstory of a Second Space Race?

Multicultural storytelling isn't having your white actors use Chinese swears. Of all the possible directions you could've gone with that prompt, "Chinese swears" was the laziest choice. This one still gets me pretty miffed.



Hard disagree. Spice isn't just a MacGuffin -- Paul's exposure to it starts triggering visions and prophetic experiences. It's no accident that the more he gets exposed to spice -- the thing the entire universe desperately needs -- the more he feels the weight of his prophesied future bearing down on him. Paul is shackled by spice just like the navigator's guild is, albeit conceptually rather than logistically. It's the same for humans taking the roles of machines -- I only ever read the first book, and that felt like a highly important feature of the world that informed the story. You say that it becomes more important in future books but I've only read the original novel, and I felt it was plenty relevant.



I don't think a TV series needs 5 seasons to flesh out its worldbuilding. I don't think a book needs its entire pagecount. The best works can do it in a chapter or a single scene. The Hobbit is suffused with unique charm from the first few paragraphs. Ditto for Good Omens, or the Riddle-Master trilogy. The first podcast episode of Welcome To Night Vale sets a very clear tone, as do the opening scenes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Granted, some of these have the benefit of immensely different worlds (almost to the point of surreal in cases like Night Vale), but "space western" shares that fertile ground and thus has no excuse. The plot, the politics, and the logistics don't even matter; it's all about whether the behavior and dialogue of the characters can offer you a clear insight into a unique world, and whether that draws you in asking more questions. Who are these people? What are they doing? Why do they care about seemingly inconsequential things like X, Y, and Z? In the stories I mentioned as example, I wanted the answers to those questions. In Firefly, I saw the first few scenes and didn't come away with questions about the world, outside of a vague good-spirited interest in watching more.

You said compare to Dune's first half: I'll do you one better and compare to its first chapter. Right at the start, we get the gom jabbar, the pain box, someone using The Voice, and the Bene Gesserit litany against fear. We get to see Paul's and Jessica's interactions, knowing that he's the "illegitimate" son of a Duke by modern American standards but nobody treats him that way. Even stripping away all of the big-picture dialogue about imperial politics, this single scene gives an abundance of clues and hints to what this world is like, what we can expect, and what we should be wondering about. It's truly unique and compelling, in ways that feel like they'll become important, right from the get-go.



Yeah, not just focusing on the "power players" is a good call. I disagree that Dune exclusively focuses on royalty (given that the scene I still remember the most clearly a decade later is with Mapes, the housekeeper), but I agree with you that focusing on the common people is an excellent way to give flavor for the day-to-day life in your constructed world.

To go back to my earlier point, Severance IMO is absolutely saturated with strong worldbuilding choices and clever organic ways to communicate them. The characters there aren't in positions of power (that we know of), and even though we know their work is important to the plot and the wider world, it doesn't feel like their experience is much different from any other of the tens of thousands of other Severed workers. We don't get big-picture politics or leadership insights: we get faceless instructions or cryptic musings from the higher-ups, and the central mystery of "what the heck are we supposed to be doing in this job?" is so compelling that you don't need to expand the focus much further than that.

I'll admit that my regard for Firefly's worldbuilding dropped considerably this past year when I watched Cowboy Bebop for the first time. A lot of the things that felt "unique" about Firefly were present there, too, along with a hefty dose of intrigue and a ton more breadcrumbs. It turns out that "Space Western" was older than I thought, and there are numerous aspects of its style and world that Firefly definitely didn't originate. Bebop is an excellent example of the kind of worldbuilding choices that Firefly could have made, even from the first episode, to capitalize on its plot structure. The cast of Bebop also drift from planet to planet, taking jobs and interacting with locals, but each episode is packed with worldbuilding details that both make each location feel unique and also reveal tidbits and mysteries about the bigger world. The characters are too focused on not starving to care, but the audience gets a really exciting picture to piece together. Except for the Vicious episodes, which never interested me for even a second and feel totally tacked-on.

I'm not trying to compare the two quality-wise (I actually prefer Firefly in almost every way -- as an actual show I think it's a lot more enjoyable and compelling), but in terms of worldbuilding it's no contest. Cowboy Bebop is an example of exactly what you're talking about, and it makes far more of its premise in terms of worldbuilding than Firefly ever did...even with basically the same amount of total runtime.

Firefly didn't focus on the major political shifts of its society, which is totally fine by me -- in fact, I usually speak out against the strict definition of sci-fi worldbuilding as "politics, economics, logistics, and religion" that Dune more or less codified -- but in my opinion, it also didn't focus on the little stuff. That's where I think it falls short. Outside of the gasps of unique detail like Reavers, Firefly just feels like a regular Western where the heroes occasionally fly a spaceship.

Which does nothing to diminish how much I like the series, to be clear. It's a favorite of mine. I don't believe every work of sci-fi or fantasy needs a deep sense of worldbuilding. Creators frequently over-invest in worldbuilding and the story suffers for it. It's not a failing to not accomplish something that you didn't set out to do, and I've never believed that Firefly's creators were out to build a crazy-unique, compelling, living world. I believe they were out to craft a good story. And they did that, quite well.

Standard disclaimer: my response length and intensity is because this is a super interesting discussion to me. If I'm coming off aggressive please let me know because it's definitely not intended.

Nah. Nothing aggressive there. Good and well thought out responses. I'll just give some general responses.

I think you and I have very different interpretations (or means of measuring?) worldbuilding. Based on your post, you seem to equate it with "unique and interesting things that exist in this world". You dismiss Firefly because it has nothing unique about it. You seem to really like the Fremen, the Bene Gesserit, the Gom Jabbar, the Voice, the Spice, etc in Dune.

I don't agree though. Those things are useful tools to creating a world, but let's face it. The Spice in Dune is essentially the Unobtainium in Avatar (the Cameron film). This is what I meant by it being "just there". It exists. There's no specific explanation for why it exists in this universe but not in ours, but it does and it drives the entire conflict and plot of the book/series. To me, things like this in stories can act like a crutch. Useful, but if you can create a compelling world without them, that might even be better.

Firefly doesn't have the equivalent. It builds its world out of otherwise "normal" things. Heck. They don't seem to even have FTL drives on their ships, or shields, or phasers, or transporters, or any other cool sci-fi tech. But to me, that made the world feel "more real" and not less. They make a huge point of "everything here is something we could imagine existing based on current understanding of science". Well, and then they create an outlier in the form of River. To me, the whole worldbuilding and setting of Firefly was expressed in one line in the airied pilot (The Train Job), when Jayne says "Don't they know cargo ships don't got no guns?". That told me, right there, that this was not going to be the stereotypical sci-fi depiction of "special people" on a "special ship" on a "special mission". It's a more subtle, but IMO much more complete, style of worldbuilding. It's refreshing to have a world that doesn't depend on some "special things" existing to make it work.


I also don't really agree with your assessment of the multicultural aspects of the series. And maybe it's the world "multicultural". Perhaps "blended cultures" would be better? This is not a world where there are two distinct identifiable cultures that exist (and appear to us just like current modern equivalents, so we don't mix them up). As someone who is a US citizen, of mostly Anglo descent, growing up very near the US/Mexico border, I actually really appreciated how Firefly depicted the whole "two broad cultures left Earth and then settled this system together, and now we're 500 years later". My Spanish is mediocre at best (I can read/write it much better than speak), but guess what? I frequently will insert a Spanish phrase into the middle or end of a sentence when speaking, often without realizing or even thinking about it much. I certainly may use "colorful language" in Spanish as well. Back in the mid 90s I lived on a street called "Camino Raposa", and was on the phone with some saleswoman in like Atlanta or something (you know, back when Amazon didn't exist, so this stuff was done by phone), and when I gave her my address, she asked "is that street, or drive, or road....?", and I remember being briefly confused at the question, then answered "um... It's camino". It was so natural for me to think in terms of Spanish names, that it flummoxed me to encounter someone who didn't. That's what a blend of culture and language actually looks like. So seeing the characters in the show do the same thing was to me an absolutely fantastic (and realistic) depiction of "we have western characters, cause the show is aimed at a US audience, but are showing how these characters woiuld speak and act in a world where Asian influences abound".

To me, that was "just freaking right". Showing two completely separate sets of cultures in the same show, which is what you seem to have wanted, would have been wrong. We'd have "token Asian character", and "token Asian crew", and "token Asian hotel/restaurant/business/whatever". Instead we got a whole assortment of otherwise western looking settings, with Chinese characters and signs and behaviors all over the place. We see western looking people picking up chopsticks and eating with them, without thinking "I'm eating at an Asian restaurant, so I'll use chopsticks". We see constant blending of Asian themes and styles everywhere, and not just in "characters/places intended to be identified as Asian". The show accurately depicted what an actual blending of cultures looks like (as opposed to two different cultures which happen to be in the same general area, which is very very different).

So yeah. What you point to as a flaw I see as a really well thought out bit of worldbuilding. This isn't just "half the population is Asian, and half Western", it's a blending of both cultures (with a fair amount of allowance towards the show's intended audience, of course).


I do totally get the comparison between Firefly and Cowboy Bebop. But I don't agree that Bebop has better/more worldbuilding then Firefly. Specifically if we're talking about different planets having different feel to them, I'm not getting your contrast argument. Bebop did this "ok" and so did Firefly. As I mentioned previously, Persephone definitely felt different than Jaynestown, versus Patience's moon, versus Niska's station, versus whatever planet the brothel was on, etc, etc. And all of them felt and looked very different from the core worlds as well. I think maybe the reason I felt that the setting was better handled in Firefly (though that's a matter of personal taste), was that they really focused on "haves vs have nots" (and more broadly "common folk" versus "fancy folk"). On persephone, it's not "this is what Persephone looks like", it's "this is what the area around the space port looks like", and "this is what the part of town Badger operates in looks like" and "this is what the fancy upscale folks/place at the ball they attend to get the job looks like". We see this in Jaynestown as well, with the mudders literally caked in mud and living in holes in the ground, while the governor and his son live in a fancy mansion where all is clean and beautiful. We see this right on Serenity as well. Contrast what Malcom's cabin looks like to Inara's shuttle, to Kaylee's room. Each has a look and feel to it. Those are the little details that made the series pop IMO.

We don't just see the contrast of rustic versus modern, but also have deep storylines that revolve around why these contrasts exist, and how they affect the characters and everyone/everything around them. And we're also given all of the backstory needed to understand everything that is going on. The plight of the colonists on the outer worlds. The independance movement. The war. And the aftermath of that war being crushed. It's not as "grand" as the conflict in Dune, but it sets up a huge amount of the setting IMO. And pretty much everything that happens in the series is driven by this setting. It's not just background for the sake of background. Each world they visit isn't the way it is just for the sake of saying "this world is different than the last one". Each one has a specific place in the setting, and by visiting them, we are seeing the different aspects of how the existing power/economic system drives those worlds to be what they are.


Dunno. Maybe I just like much more subtle worldbuilding? I like small details that no one draws specific attention to, but which are there and show a degree of thoughtfulness in their inclusion. I don't need the writers to spell out to me that "this world is a core world, so it's got gleaming cities", or "this planet is located on a major trade route, so it's somewhat developed and has a range of wealth to poverty", or "this world is out on the edges and is poor as heck" (or "is run by a ruthless dictator/governor/whatever"). They just show us those things, and we can extrapolate why these worlds and locations each look and feel different purely via other bits we are told about the setting. But each of those things, and their differences fit perfectly into the broader setting and history that we have been provided, so everything 'works".

But that's just me. I like that style. A lot.

[Ionathus]

Thanks again for the responses and your perspective! Yeah, I'm getting the feeling this will be a pretty core disagreement. Have a few side questions to your comments but I think we can say "agree to disagree" on the core of the debate.

I don't agree though. Those things are useful tools to creating a world, but let's face it. The Spice in Dune is essentially the Unobtainium in Avatar (the Cameron film). This is what I meant by it being "just there". It exists. There's no specific explanation for why it exists in this universe but not in ours, but it does and it drives the entire conflict and plot of the book/series. To me, things like this in stories can act like a crutch. Useful, but if you can create a compelling world without them, that might even be better.

I don't think spice and Unobtanium are in the same categories, though. Unobtanium is just "desirable" but spice informs a ton about the world it inhabits. It has an actual effect beyond being generically valuable.

I can't remember the source, but I recently read an argument from a reviewer that drew a clear line between an actual MacGuffin vs. any unspecified plot device. Basically, we talk about The One Ring from LotR like it's a MacGuffin, but it's technically not -- according to this person, MacGuffins by definition must have no other impact on the story beyond "being wanted." And The One Ring has a ton of impact on the story: it has actual powers that Frodo makes use of, it tempts and corrupts him and the people around him, and it has a will of its own. The corruption of the Ring not only drives the plot, but it drives the theme as well: if I had to oversimplify what LotR is "about," down to a single theme, it would be about all the ways power can be a burden and a temptation.

That's too active of a role to be a true MacGuffin. Compare to, like you said, Unobtanium in Avatar or the briefcase in Pulp Fiction (caveat: I've never seen it, but I've heard a lot of people say it has no properties other than "being wanted by the characters"). The spice melange in Dune has also never felt like a MacGuffin to me, by that definition. It's not just a valuable thing people want: it's integral to the society that's built up around it. We get to see exactly what it does, and why it's valuable, and we even see how it affects people who take it too long / are exposed to it from birth. Paul develops prescience from it, and his reaction to the destiny he can see drives the entire plot and theme of the story.

You don't like that there's no scientific explanation for why it works in the Dune universe and not ours -- that's not a problem in my eyes. The kind of sci-fi I enjoy is often built on "what-ifs" that tweak a single property of physics to enable something interesting. I'm okay with that single thing's properties being basically magic, as long as it enables a compelling and well-developed story and world to be built up around it. It's one of the best features of sci-fi (and sometimes fantasy) to me: taking a single divergent point from baseline reality, and exploring all of the logical consequences of that change and finding unique problems and solutions that fit within the world.₁

It's certainly not the only way to do it, and I get it if it's not to your tastes, but I think calling that approach a "crutch" misses one of the best qualities of an entire branch of sci-fi: the "what if" magic that you can construct around one neat idea.

Firefly doesn't have the equivalent. It builds its world out of otherwise "normal" things. Heck. They don't seem to even have FTL drives on their ships, or shields, or phasers, or transporters, or any other cool sci-fi tech. But to me, that made the world feel "more real" and not less. They make a huge point of "everything here is something we could imagine existing based on current understanding of science". Well, and then they create an outlier in the form of River. To me, the whole worldbuilding and setting of Firefly was expressed in one line in the airied pilot (The Train Job), when Jayne says "Don't they know cargo ships don't got no guns?". That told me, right there, that this was not going to be the stereotypical sci-fi depiction of "special people" on a "special ship" on a "special mission". It's a more subtle, but IMO much more complete, style of worldbuilding. It's refreshing to have a world that doesn't depend on some "special things" existing to make it work.
...

I do totally get the comparison between Firefly and Cowboy Bebop. But I don't agree that Bebop has better/more worldbuilding then Firefly. Specifically if we're talking about different planets having different feel to them, I'm not getting your contrast argument. Bebop did this "ok" and so did Firefly. As I mentioned previously, Persephone definitely felt different than Jaynestown, versus Patience's moon, versus Niska's station, versus whatever planet the brothel was on, etc, etc. And all of them felt and looked very different from the core worlds as well. I think maybe the reason I felt that the setting was better handled in Firefly (though that's a matter of personal taste), was that they really focused on "haves vs have nots" (and more broadly "common folk" versus "fancy folk").
...
They just show us those things, and we can extrapolate why these worlds and locations each look and feel different purely via other bits we are told about the setting. But each of those things, and their differences fit perfectly into the broader setting and history that we have been provided, so everything 'works".
...
But that's just me. I like that style. A lot.

I didn't mean to imply that you need "special people" or "special things" to make worldbuilding good -- I should have clarified that I'm happy with any focus character or storyline, as long as the world they inhabit feels different from other stories. That's more what I meant by using the word "unique" so much.

We're probably circling this particular drain of "did the towns in Firefly feel distinct or not" -- you say yes, I say no -- but I'm curious what you found lacking in Bebop's approach to basically the same thing. Because Bebop visited probably the same number of different societies as Firefly did (similar-ish episode count too, or at least by total minutes of runtime), but I always found Bebop's societies to have more distinguishing details. When Spike and Jet are rummaging around in the destroyed Earth looking for a functioning VCR (), the ruins and wreckage felt very distinctive. Same for Ed's old "orphanage" that she ran away from, with a bunch of kids that pick through rubble and live in a giant crater. Same with the smugglers they run into, or the senile old man they have to track down, or whatever the heck Mad Pierrot had going on. Each one feels so unique and distinctive and adds another wrinkle to the world. Even the stargates have a whole "thing" going on that you slowly piece together over the course of many episodes, where you're basically introduced to the concept and then drip-fed hints to a great cataclysm that was caused by a malfunctioning stargate years and years ago.

All this to say that I'm really curious what you think Bebop could have done better in this regard. In my experience, they did the same approach as Firefly -- "poor-as-dirt mercenaries visit a new town every episode, slowly revealing little details about the world" -- but in a much more compelling way, at least from a worldbuilding standpoint.

Showing two completely separate sets of cultures in the same show, which is what you seem to have wanted, would have been wrong. We'd have "token Asian character", and "token Asian crew", and "token Asian hotel/restaurant/business/whatever".

You might have a different definition, but to me, "token" characters are defined by just being present in the story without having a significant impact on it. So a version of Firefly where half of the main cast is Asian would be incapable of having that crew feel like "token" characters, because they'd be half of the main characters and participate in at least half of the interactions. They'd still feel like a unified crew, but maybe their perspectives would differ in interesting ways.₂ If (picking 4 at random) Kaylee, Wash, Jayne, and Shepherd Book were played by Asian actors, but still received exactly as much dialogue and character development as they got in the original series, that wouldn't be "token" at all. Firefly's characters all received a lot of love and attention by the writers, so they all feel very compelling. That wouldn't change one bit with Asian actors.

Of course, I think if they had been written to be Asian characters from the get-go, there would be plenty you could tweak about their storylines to explore what being Asian (or having Asian heritage, if we're going with true "melting pot") means in the universe of Firefly. I think you could just swap actors and get away with it, but a truly great feat of worldbuilding would be to bring in writers with that cultural background to look at how those characters would interact in this so-called melting pot future.

My complaint is that Firefly didn't do this. They picked nine "Western" actors and wrote nine "Western" main roles for them, then tried to claim this world was a blend of Western and Eastern worldviews.

Instead we got a whole assortment of otherwise western looking settings, with Chinese characters and signs and behaviors all over the place. We see western looking people picking up chopsticks and eating with them, without thinking "I'm eating at an Asian restaurant, so I'll use chopsticks". We see constant blending of Asian themes and styles everywhere, and not just in "characters/places intended to be identified as Asian". The show accurately depicted what an actual blending of cultures looks like (as opposed to two different cultures which happen to be in the same general area, which is very very different).

So yeah. What you point to as a flaw I see as a really well thought out bit of worldbuilding. This isn't just "half the population is Asian, and half Western", it's a blending of both cultures (with a fair amount of allowance towards the show's intended audience, of course).

I agree that these are unique and interesting worldbuilding details. I just think they do a bad job of showing the world that Firefly claims to be. Firefly is an American Western with American characters who have American priorities and American cultural sensibilities. There's Mandarin on the signs, sure, but I challenge you to identify three major cultural influences from East Asia in how the people of Firefly think, act, or interact with others. It's not a true "melting pot" if everything we see & hear is Western, outside of a few swears and some signs.

If Firefly wanted to be true to how its setting was presented in the show, the lore should be changed to reflect what we see: almost exclusively Old West American types living in a world with East Asian set dressing. Here's one option that could offer revised lore for that setting:

"Earth was used up, and China and America escaped. Most of the escape ships were built in China, by Chinese crews, with America contributing resources. Then, after generations en route to the new star system, there was a massive conflict: the predominantly-Chinese faction and the predominantly-American faction descended into full-scale fighting. When the dust settled, most people with Chinese heritage had died. Those with American heritage were in charge and made up the majority of the population. Because the ships and crews had been culturally Chinese, the now-American crews were reliant on Chinese writing and language to operate their ships. Now the universe is mostly descendants of Americans with American values of freedom and prosperity, but Chinese language and writing is prevalent due to how important it was on the trip over."

Now, that's a very different vibe to start off a fun little Space Western romp of a show, and I'm betting the creators didn't want to imply such an ugly past in their worldbuilding. But this justification is leagues more accurate to how the show actually presents its world -- Americans living in a Chinese setting.

It was so natural for me to think in terms of Spanish names, that it flummoxed me to encounter someone who didn't. That's what a blend of culture and language actually looks like. So seeing the characters in the show do the same thing was to me...absolutely fantastic

This was a neat story, thank you. I get what you're saying about having multilingual influences that feel natural -- it's an experience I didn't get and am honestly quite envious of.

I'd hazard a guess, though, that growing up near the US/Mexico border, you met and interacted with a lot of people with Mexican heritage. They were probably in your class at school, at the grocery store, at your place of work, and generally just around the community. Even if you weren't close friends with many Mexican people, they were still likely present everywhere you went, and their worldview probably informed yours, at least partially, because part of the society you lived in was tailored to their needs and sensibilities. That's the part I'm missing from Firefly. Not only do we not get many true Asian influences in the world's culture -- we barely even get Asian characters onscreen. And if memory serves, I don't think there's a named character of Asian descent in the show. They're suspiciously absent.

"we have western characters, cause the show is aimed at a US audience."

I don't think this is a valid defense for the creative choice to not cast any Asian actors. There are plenty of Chinese-American actors who would be the perfect people to explore a world where China and America were the two sources of the eventual melting pot. And western audiences have been willing to see East Asian actors and stories for decades -- Bruce Lee's heyday was thirty years before Firefly.

Unless there's some production hurdle I don't know about that forced them to suddenly scrap all of the Asian characters and stories they had planned for this melting pot world, I just don't see any reason to give the creative team credit for this choice. They had the chance to explore a world with a truly different cultural heritage than "classic Old West America," and they settled for some minor details instead of committing fully to the idea.

1. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is one of my favorite examples of this kind of approach. The book isn't very well written, from a dialogue and storytelling standpoint, but the main ideas in it are fascinating and inventive. He creates a single "what if" point -- "what if there was an interstellar organism with near-limitless energy storage capabilities?" -- and then he structures the entire story around it, both problems and solutions. Not only does the main conflict of the book come from this change (Astrophage is eating the sunlight and causing global cooling and famine on Earth, and since it's single-celled it can't be communicated with), but the main solution does, too: Astrophage's insane energy storage abilities make interstellar travel (and thus a search for the solution to the sun-eating thing) feasible, in a hack-it-together-desperation sort of way. The characters routinely use Astrophage in creative ways based on its single unique property, leading to an entire story based around the logical consequences of this one change to baseline reality. It's a really neat bit of sci-fi storytelling.

2. Take Avatar: The Last Airbender as an example. The main characters are from three entirely different cultures -- Air Nomad, Water Tribe, Earth Kingdom. They all have radically different personalities, goals, and outlooks on life, but they all feel like real characters. Many of their storylines and character development moments are based around their distinct upbringing and culture (Aang's nonviolence, Sokka's insecurity and fear of losing loved ones, Katara's drive and unwillingness to accept traditions she hates, etc.). Those characters all deeply embody the different cultures they came from, while still shining as complex and human-feeling characters. And their outlooks clash frequently, where Aang wants to do one thing but Sokka overrules him, etc. I think that's a perfect example of how to blend cultures on a single team without resorting to "token" portrayals.

[Eldan]

Hey now, Unobtainium has an effect. They need it to power their spaceships so they can evacuate Earth before everyone dies.

[Ionathus]

Hey now, Unobtainium has an effect. They need it to power their spaceships so they can evacuate Earth before everyone dies.

Hmm, interesting. Was that in Avatar 2? I've only seen the first (and long ago, so maybe they referenced it there too?) -- appreciate the context!

That said, Unobtanium's role in the plot of Avatar 1 begins and ends at "humans want the shiny rock." Even if there's a lore reason elsewhere, its only impact on the main characters is its desirability. If the humans or the Na'vi had decided to somehow harness the power of Unobtanium to get the upper hand on their opponents, or if the plot was centered around trying to research/determine/uncover its core properties, that would push it out of MacGuffin territory.

Not that I think MacGuffins are bad or shouldn't be used!₁ Just like some villains are allowed to be obviously, unrepentantly, and stylistically evil, some plot devices are okay just being "the thing that characters want." You can tell a lot of interesting stories based around different groups trying to get a single generically valuable prize. But in most cases a MacGuffin's impact on worldbuilding will be much lesser, because its role is different from things like spice in Dune or The One Ring in LotR.

That's why I wanted to draw a distinction about things like spice in Dune: it's not just "a valuable thing everybody wants." If Spice was a random inert material that's mined on Arrakis but never used, then gets shipped off to a Navigator's Guild that we never see or interact with, that would put it closer to being a MacGuffin. But spice has a presence in the story, and we see its effect on the world in many many ways throughout even the first book. Paul is the biggest example but there are plenty of others.

EDIT:
*~*Breaking news*~*
I found the original work that draws the distinction I mentioned about MacGuffins! To the surprise of nobody who has read my forum posts, it is an Overly Sarcastic Productions video

Apparently it's older than I remembered, and coined by Hitchcock! He sums it up even better:

A MacGuffin is the thing that the spies are after, but the audience doesn't care.

1. I do much prefer MacGruddles but that's beside the point

[pendell]

Spice is the equivalent to oil in the modern world , and I believe it was written as a direct parallel; the resource of the 20th century, control of which decided the destiny of nations. Spice is ... well, everything in the Dune universe. It enables mentat computation, bene gesserit precognition, space navigation, as well as extending life such that everyone who can afford it takes it for medical reasons. A mere handful of it will buy a permanent estate on Tupile, the exile planet.

There is no Imperium, no civilization, without the spice.

That is considerably more than a Mcguffin. A mcguffin is something you can swap in and out of a production without doing any violence to the story. The One Ring from Tolkien is one such: It was just a bog-standard fairy tale magic ring in the original hobbit before being promoted to All-Powerful Doomsday Weapon in the sequel. If Tolkien had decided to promote Sting or the mithril waistcoat or some random treasure from the dragon's hoard instead, the story wouldn't have changed all that much. A mcguffin is a placeholder, the football in a match, the thing the characters fight over but is ultimately completely replaceable.

By contrast, you can't tell the story of Dune without both Arrakis and the spice; this is not just an adventure serial but an in-depth look at the resource conflicts of the 20th century, brought on by colonization, as the great power scheme to manipulate both each other and the indigenous locals in the hope of monopolizing the supply.

Take the Ring out of Lord of the Rings, it isn't too hard to find some other bauble to fight over. Take the Spice out of Dune, and not only the story but much of the worldbuilding falls apart as well.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Ionathus]

Spice is the equivalent to oil in the modern world , and I believe it was written as a direct parallel; the resource of the 20th century, control of which decided the destiny of nations. Spice is ... well, everything in the Dune universe. It enables mentat computation, bene gesserit precognition, space navigation, as well as extending life such that everyone who can afford it takes it for medical reasons. A mere handful of it will buy a permanent estate on Tupile, the exile planet.

There is no Imperium, no civilization, without the spice.

That is considerably more than a Mcguffin. A mcguffin is something you can swap in and out of a production without doing any violence to the story. The One Ring from Tolkien is one such: It was just a bog-standard fairy tale magic ring in the original hobbit before being promoted to All-Powerful Doomsday Weapon in the sequel. If Tolkien had decided to promote Sting or the mithril waistcoat or some random treasure from the dragon's hoard instead, the story wouldn't have changed all that much. A mcguffin is a placeholder, the football in a match, the thing the characters fight over but is ultimately completely replaceable.

By contrast, you can't tell the story of Dune without both Arrakis and the spice; this is not just an adventure serial but an in-depth look at the resource conflicts of the 20th century, brought on by colonization, as the great power scheme to manipulate both each other and the indigenous locals in the hope of monopolizing the supply.

Take the Ring out of Lord of the Rings, it isn't too hard to find some other bauble to fight over. Take the Spice out of Dune, and not only the story but much of the worldbuilding falls apart as well.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Agreed with your Dune thoughts, but The Ring in LotR is also more than just an object: it has a mind of its own, and it corrupts the people around it. You couldn't just replace it with Sting for the same effect...unless you really want to assassinate Boromir's character (even more than Theatrical Edition Fellowship did ) and have everyone trying to murder Frodo so they can take his shiny-but-still-just-a-sword sword

[Tyndmyr]

We're probably circling this particular drain of "did the towns in Firefly feel distinct or not" -- you say yes, I say no -- but I'm curious what you found lacking in Bebop's approach to basically the same thing. Because Bebop visited probably the same number of different societies as Firefly did (similar-ish episode count too, or at least by total minutes of runtime), but I always found Bebop's societies to have more distinguishing details. When Spike and Jet are rummaging around in the destroyed Earth looking for a functioning VCR (), the ruins and wreckage felt very distinctive. Same for Ed's old "orphanage" that she ran away from, with a bunch of kids that pick through rubble and live in a giant crater. Same with the smugglers they run into, or the senile old man they have to track down, or whatever the heck Mad Pierrot had going on. Each one feels so unique and distinctive and adds another wrinkle to the world. Even the stargates have a whole "thing" going on that you slowly piece together over the course of many episodes, where you're basically introduced to the concept and then drip-fed hints to a great cataclysm that was caused by a malfunctioning stargate years and years ago.

I view Bebop's approach to exploring the world as....very filler heavy. But on the flip side, it's really, really good filler. Possibly the best filler in any show I've seen. There's a ton of shots that are not connected to plot, but are largely just establishing mood. I think this really only works because of the particularly excellent music in Cowboy Bebop. It ends up being like 90% about establishing a vibe, and for some reason, that ends up being fine, because the sheer quality of everything is top notch.

It's unique, and probably not easily replicated. The live action certainly didn't seem to be exactly quite the same thing. Not bad, entirely, but it wasn't the original.

I agree that these are unique and interesting worldbuilding details. I just think they do a bad job of showing the world that Firefly claims to be. Firefly is an American Western with American characters who have American priorities and American cultural sensibilities. There's Mandarin on the signs, sure, but I challenge you to identify three major cultural influences from East Asia in how the people of Firefly think, act, or interact with others.

While you are certainly correct that the western influences are much stronger, pedantry requires that I take up this challenge.

1. Niska's quotations of Shan Yu. Strictly speaking, this probably isn't a Chinese influence given that Shan Yu's probably an allegory for Attila the Hun, but as an eastern influence, it still counts.
2. The familiarity of the language varies by who is speaking. When Jayne speaks it, it's choppy and rough. When Inara speaks it, it's correct and flows well. This is a part of the worldbuilding well informed by the nature and history of these characters. We have several indications that Chinese has more high society influence, and that's actually kind of important in several cases, as it greatly increases the difficulty of the characters that do not have such a background blending in or posing as those that do.
3. I'm pretty sure that Simon and River were supposed to have some asian ancestry. The show didn't really have time to go into it, but we get some of that high society vibe, wide representation of Asians in River's class in Serenity, and there's a lot more influences there. Plus, yknow, the surname Tam.

So, this gives us the impression that Chinese culture is more dominant, and we're seeing more western culture specifically because we are largely seeing the fringes, which is kind of interesting.

[Ionathus]

I view Bebop's approach to exploring the world as....very filler heavy. But on the flip side, it's really, really good filler. Possibly the best filler in any show I've seen. There's a ton of shots that are not connected to plot, but are largely just establishing mood. I think this really only works because of the particularly excellent music in Cowboy Bebop. It ends up being like 90% about establishing a vibe, and for some reason, that ends up being fine, because the sheer quality of everything is top notch.

It's unique, and probably not easily replicated. The live action certainly didn't seem to be exactly quite the same thing. Not bad, entirely, but it wasn't the original.

100% agree. Bebop is almost entirely "vibes," with minimal plot. That's probably why I find it so memorable and evocative, despite not really being interested in it as a story for most of my watchthrough.

While you are certainly correct that the western influences are much stronger, pedantry requires that I take up this challenge.

1. Niska's quotations of Shan Yu. Strictly speaking, this probably isn't a Chinese influence given that Shan Yu's probably an allegory for Attila the Hun, but as an eastern influence, it still counts.
2. The familiarity of the language varies by who is speaking. When Jayne speaks it, it's choppy and rough. When Inara speaks it, it's correct and flows well. This is a part of the worldbuilding well informed by the nature and history of these characters. We have several indications that Chinese has more high society influence, and that's actually kind of important in several cases, as it greatly increases the difficulty of the characters that do not have such a background blending in or posing as those that do.
3. I'm pretty sure that Simon and River were supposed to have some asian ancestry. The show didn't really have time to go into it, but we get some of that high society vibe, wide representation of Asians in River's class in Serenity, and there's a lot more influences there. Plus, yknow, the surname Tam.

So, this gives us the impression that Chinese culture is more dominant, and we're seeing more western culture specifically because we are largely seeing the fringes, which is kind of interesting.

Thank you for your earnest response to my rhetorical question! I like these examples - they're rather speculative, but it tracks pretty well with my memory.

If that's true, I wish we'd seen more of that dynamic explored, even in the few episodes we did get. It would have been really compelling to tackle a dominant Chinese culture in the Alliance, with mainly Westerners living on the fringes. I'm not sure I'd trust Firefly's showrunners to tell that story (especially if the now-mostly-Chinese Alliance stayed as cartoonishly evil as they were in the original series), but it definitely paints a more unique picture.

[Eldan]

Hmm, interesting. Was that in Avatar 2? I've only seen the first (and long ago, so maybe they referenced it there too?) -- appreciate the context!

That said, Unobtanium's role in the plot of Avatar 1 begins and ends at "humans want the shiny rock." Even if there's a lore reason elsewhere, its only impact on the main characters is its desirability. If the humans or the Na'vi had decided to somehow harness the power of Unobtanium to get the upper hand on their opponents, or if the plot was centered around trying to research/determine/uncover its core properties, that would push it out of MacGuffin territory.

I remember it being discussed a lot during the time just after Avatar 1 came out, but I don't remember if it was in teh actual movie. They released a lot of supplementary material for that movie, though, like ecology videos and illustrated articles on the technology, it was probably there.

[Ramza00]

I am going to be annoying

I don't agree though. Those things are useful tools to creating a world, but let's face it. The Spice in Dune is essentially the Unobtainium in Avatar (the Cameron film). This is what I meant by it being "just there". It exists. There's no specific explanation for why it exists in this universe but not in ours, but it does and it drives the entire conflict and plot of the book/series. To me, things like this in stories can act like a crutch. Useful, but if you can create a compelling world without them, that might even be better.

you are correct 👍

( so pardon me ) it is literally the macguffin in Avatar movie 2 which goes by the name ^Amitra and you get it from killing the whales which churn the milky oceans. I will let people google Amitra and figure out the snakes / sandworm connection 🐍 for Avatar 2 changed these mythical beasts to whales but in myth they are both land and sea. It is literally a reference in Dune 2 and Avatar 2, to a religious myth (thus I will let google speak about it not me due to board rules)

Yeah Cameron borrowed the macguffin from Dune for the unobtainium (similar not same) is also not just a spice drug but also the magic thing that makes the cool type of space travel possible as a super conductor. Unobtainium is not the scientific name for the thing, it has a fancy science name and it is a super conductor rare earth material. But the non nerds just call it Unobtainium as slang. Much like spice is the slang name with melange (me-lange also ma,lanj) being the more official names.

And spice is many things not just a life extension drug or a space travel drug but also other things. It suffuses the culture in so many things that the average individual is not aware of all the things it is in. Much like oils and plastics with our world. But those two things is why people care about Arrakis as the most important planet to do extraction from in a colonial manner. Well Dune 1 and Dune 2 has two macguffin but in the end Pandora is the religious jewel of heaven yet man with our social strife can not see it’s true possibilities if we live in harmony with it from an ecological perspective. Per Herbert and Cameron who has been writing different versions of Avatar scripts since the 1990s.

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Bebop is 1960s and 1970s Lupin the 3rd pastiche which in turn is inspired by half a dozen things, thrown together like a salad shaker and become its own thing. I say this as a compliment to both Bebop and Lupin, for while one can trace the lineages it is also a different thing, much like kids are different than their grandparents.

[Ionathus]

And spice is many things not just a life extension drug or a space travel drug but also other things. It suffuses the culture in so many things that the average individual is not aware of all the things it is in. Much like oils and plastics with our world. But those two things is why people care about Arrakis as the most important planet to do extraction from in a colonial manner. Well Dune 1 and Dune 2 has two macguffin but in the end Pandora is the religious jewel of heaven yet man with our social strife can not see it’s true possibilities if we live in harmony with it from an ecological perspective. Per Herbert and Cameron who has been writing different versions of Avatar scripts since the 1990s.

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."

Bebop is 1960s and 1970s Lupin the 3rd pastiche which in turn is inspired by half a dozen things, thrown together like a salad shaker and become its own thing. I say this as a compliment to both Bebop and Lupin, for while one can trace the lineages it is also a different thing, much like kids are different than their grandparents.

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?

[Tyndmyr]

Thank you for your earnest response to my rhetorical question! I like these examples - they're rather speculative, but it tracks pretty well with my memory.

If that's true, I wish we'd seen more of that dynamic explored, even in the few episodes we did get. It would have been really compelling to tackle a dominant Chinese culture in the Alliance, with mainly Westerners living on the fringes. I'm not sure I'd trust Firefly's showrunners to tell that story (especially if the now-mostly-Chinese Alliance stayed as cartoonishly evil as they were in the original series), but it definitely paints a more unique picture.

If the number of examples had been larger, I could have probably only stretched to four, as Inara's a name of asian origin, and she's portrayed as having significant elements of that culture. It's not strictly Chinese, but it still sort of works with the general theme. I can't think of a fifth example offhand.

I do wonder myself if Firefly ended up being so wonderful solely because of it being cut short. What it was was pretty great, but many a great show takes a weird turn into mediocrity. We fondly remember the shows that end while they are still good, but once a show gets the Game of Thrones treatment, its cultural relevance takes a pretty big hit.

Perhaps given another season or two it would have gone terribly awry, perhaps not. All we have at this point is speculation, pretty much.