OMG OMG OMG OMG i’m so EXCITED!

Skipper is coming down in a little while so we can watch Firefly episodes until we both bleed from the eyeballs or we run out of Firefly episodes. The latter is actually is the more likely possibility, considering that a) there’s only one season, and b) we’ve both watched Serenity over and over and over in recent weeks, and still can’t seem to get enough.

I wish I could tell you that this love affair I have with this show is easy to pin down. It’s not a Joss Whedon fangirl thing, as the only other thing he’s put out that I loved was Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog. That said, Whedon can write some motherhumpin’ good dialoge. The dialogue may actually be my favorite part of the Firefly ‘verse. It’s seamless, sensical, and artful, and different characters speak with just enough difference to show that they hail from different places. In addition, said dialogue is delivered well – the acting is osm.

The score is also admirable. And the costuming. And the set, too. My god, the scenery is gorgeous…

In short, this is transporting work. I can sit down with the movie or the series and fall into it – Skipper and I watched the movie together last week and kept pointing at different characters and saying, “OMG, don’t you just want to grow up to be her/him?” Which was kinda like saying, “OMG, don’t you want to live there?”

I used to shop for my fabric in a store owned by a woman who had a low opinion of science fiction**. Her grown son is apparently really into sci-fi, and he’s a bit of a troublemaker. Also, Constance is a Very Proper Lady, and doesn’t believe that anything with spaceships in it is actually literature, or worth reading. When she found out that I love sci-fi, she seemed to rethink her opinion of me – she seemed to be a little suspicious of me for a while there. I never did ask her outright what her damage was with the spaceships, but I think it has something to do with her son being a bit of a hooligan. When I mentioned this to Daniel, he posited that she had been abducted by aliens at some point, and all that probing left her with triggers. I’m really not sure I buy that, but, well, you never know, right?

Personally, I think that science fiction is more than a diversion – I think it’s Culturally Important. Not just because it can be transporting – not that I don’t love me some escapism; don’t get me wrong, I do – but because it gives us permission to imagine into the future – one can’t help but.  And if the work is transporting, the reader or viewer carries that along with them for an extended period of time; the work can even become reference. It gives us a way to look forward, it gives us a way to dream into science and to what-can-be.

But enough of that for right now I need to go get my yoga on & then pop some corn. It’s almost spaceship time!

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* ‘Til U Bleed
** Really, she’s a lovely woman if you don’t bring up interstellar travel.