What would a space opera be like if the dominant culture was Chinese or Japanese instead of American?
>>48110031
literally Firefly
Mecha.
>>48110043
>Firefly
>Like one Chinese character at most, basically an extra
Try again
>>48110031
Cowboy Bebop
>>48110109
The culture though. Very eastern. In fact, the main source of antagonism in the show was pretty clearly the western aligned elements of the original colonization ships reacting to the more totalitarian alignment of the eastern majority.
Gay
>>48110138
The culture is mainly Wild West. There's some Chinese influence, but it's clearly mostly American.
>>48110138
You can recite all the goodfeels and philosophy that Whedonfags like to try and bring up all you want, but that show was only superficially Chinese at best.
Like the Chinese cultural influence is a main talking point of fans of the show, and a selling point, but it's barely if ever present.
And it bears repeating, NO CHINESE CHARACTERS
Final Fantasy 7 but in space
No one here is Chinese enough to know.
The celestial bureaucracy and everyone who lives under it
>>48110255
>Nadesico on low tier
kill yourself baka
>>48110255
>Lexx
>Garbage tier
and what ugly, hot garbage it was. I could wallow in it quite gleefully, that putrid pile.
>>48110255
>Voyager and firefly in the same tier
Did anybody actually like Voyager?
>>48110212
The Chinese influence in Firefly is more economic than anything else. Yeah characters speak Mandarin occasionally but that's mostly because the culture just reflects the fact the Chinese built everything in that setting.
Culturally, it's just the Wild West but the women occasionally wear silk dresses.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes is pure Japanese space opera. You should all watch it. It's a masterpiece.
>>48110325
So you're not disagreeing
>>48110255
>B5
>not God Tier
pls, it did the multi-season arc so much better than DS9.
>>48110340
No, just elaborating and building on what you said.
There is a conspicuous Chinese influence, but not in the way a lot of fanboys think.
>>48110138
But all of the Alliance officials who hassle the party are white. All of the aristocrats and nobles and rich guys who buddy up to the Alliance are white. The scientists who built River were white. The Kai Leng alpha build who hunted them in Serenity was a black dude.
I never once got the impression the Alliance fought the Unification Wars to appease the Chinese overlords.
>>48110255
>The Expanse
>Mid-Tier
Nah
Neo-german space nazis.
>>48110031
>Japanese
Humanity goes extinct as high suicide rates and low birth rates devastate the population. Only android wafus/husbandos survive.
>>48110617
>nazis
Kaiser > Fuhrer
Wilhelm even had a better 'stache.
>>48110031
Space Battleship Yamato
>>48110328
So the main difference is that tactics are entirely based on forming semicircles?
>>48110255
>Expanse Mid Tier
>Firefly not High/God Tier
>New Galactica above Firefly and Expanse
>Enterprise above Garbage Tier
Place the gun to your head and pull the trigger repeatedly
>>48110318
>Did anybody actually like Voyager?
Once you come to terms with the fact that they botched the premise by not giving proper deference to the gravity of the situation of being stranded in a distant part of the galaxy with a divided crew, abandon any hope of character consistency or continuity between episodes, and accept the show as mindless entertainment, it's actually somewhat enjoyable. It's by no means Firefly tier, but it's not terrible.
>>48110130
Not much japanese culture there that I remember. I'd say a space opera with high japanese influence would just be a higher scale 80's cyberpunk setting, with more space stuff.
>>48110778
>that feeling when you're world building a kaiser reich in space essentially
Feels good. Anon you have good taste.
>>48110255
I know this is bait, and yet still I must respond...
BSG is better than Firefly? DS9 is better than TOS and B5? Enterprise is better than Dark Matter? It burns my eyes to even look at this shit.
>>48111285
Firefly deserves High-Mid tier but anything above that is kind of delusional. It is really good, and a pretty unique kind of show, but it's not the end-all be-all of serialized sci-fi fans like to say it is. It never really got the chance to show us where it could go.
And frankly, without Fillion, Baldwin, or Tudyk it never would have been as good as it was.
>>48110990
You say that like it's a bad thing
>>48111285
That guy's just trolling. For a while he used to make thinly veiled troll posts with his list as the OP image. Ignore his shit.
>>48111399
>And frankly, without Fillion, Baldwin, or Tudyk it never would have been as good as it was.
And Gina Torres and Jewel Staite. Basically, if it weren't for most of the actors, Firefly wouldn't really have worked very well. Like, if you replaced them with tax collectors or sanitation workers or something, I'm pretty sure it would've been a flop.
>>48110109
The Alliance is pretty neatly divided into anglo and sino planets anon. They even have two capitals, one per culture: Londinum and Sinhon.
As far as I remember the sino parts of the setting were only ever shown when Serenity went rescuing Inara from the nigger spy.
Outlaw Star sort of
The first step in answering this question would be asking:
What is chinese culture like?
>>48113259
+1 totalitarianism
-1 farming
>Chinese space opera
Romance of the Three Kingdoms in space?
>>48113402
That would be awesome.
Way more unique than yet another WWII parallel.
There's space opera written by a chinese guy.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26118426-ninefox-gambit
>>48110778
Nazis were already appealing to the Kaiser cult, it's not much different in effect. Especially when everyone strips the Kaiser of all of the uncool royal shit and just makes him a slightly cooler Führer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Kuo_(novel_series)
Chung Kuo is a future dominated by China, but it's not exactly space opera.
If it was a Chinese setting, it would probably be something like Romance of the Three Kingdoms or the other classics. Probably an emphasis on an imperial court or something. If it was written by Chinese, it would be focused on scientists or perfect gommunist engineers
>>48113594
Seconding that this would be awesome.
Would the main characters pilot unique ships? Or just be particularly exceptional pilots with slightly customized models?
inb4 Lu-Bu just rolls out in a space suit with a spear and takes down whole ships.
>>48110031
Radioactive, and constantly bickering back and forth about the Rape of Terra.
>>48110328
>Legend of the Galactic Heroes
I found it funny how prevalent honorable suicide was for cultures supposedly based on Prussia and America respectively.
>>48110031
I'd imagine it'd be like the world of Avatar, minus bending and in space. Think kinda like how LoK portrayed a world that had advanced to a dieselpunk level of tech but without European influence (or at least as close to that as the creators could get).
>>48110457
>>48110109
>Wowww why doesn't this western filmed tv series made to appeal to a western audience have an array of qualified Chinese actors to play Chinese characters in them, how problematic
Consider suicide.
>>48118629
When the show tries selling China-run future and does nothing to actually show that other than the characters occasionally cursing in Mandarin, I think it's a fair criticism.
At the end of the day, it's very obvious the writers intended a hegemonic Chinese culture for the 'Verse. But it just comes off as a shallow aesthetic, and an inconsistent one at that.
It works, but it's one of the few things they could have done better.
>>48115249
I've been mulling over a space opera that's also part wuxia/silat movie inspired. What I did was make fighter-size spacecrafts be common and sophisticated enough to do lone voyages - while also being customizable as fuck. So the warriors of the setting are wandering fighter pilots who customize their own ship, and dogfights are very common when two warriors cross paths.
>>48110031
It would be an amalgamated society like what Firefly was trying to do. The premise was that the two major super powers had pretty much merged.Obviously a US based series is probably going to have a bias, but globally, English is becoming the predominant language (currently, that may change) for business purposes, bt in Firefly, it was a mix of Chinese and English, that would probably be more extensive, and visually, multiplied by a factor of ten.
This is assuming about 500 years.
>>48110255
What horrible taste
>>48110031
Which Chinese or Japanese? Han China is different from Yuan China which is again different from Communist China. Same goes for Heian Japan, Sengoku Japan, Imperial Japan, and so forth.
A few Asian cultural norms that have survived the passage of time might be Confucianism; but even the idea of "Asian collectivism" is one of those ideas that strike me as more of a western exoticization of cultures that aren't that dissimilar - the slogan for today's China is Deng Xiaoping's "to get rich is glorious".
Sure, there might be a bit more emphasis on the family clan, but you find similar sort of nepotic practices in Western societies if you go back only a few decades.
>>48119654
Good call. Communist China in space is probably going to be the same as America in space, but with more Great Firewall and less voting.
>>48110031
More jedi. They're literally space samurai.
>>48110031
Awful
>>48110318
I liked it, but never sat down and watched the series sequentially. Cause it was the 90's on UPN.
>>48110031
FUCK ALL OF THOSE
DOMINANT CULTURE GLORIOUS USSR
>>48110043
Firefly is literally a Western in space. It just mixes in some Chinese cussing.
>history plebs not realizing the intense chinese influences on the old west when calling shit western
>film plebs not realizing the intense samurai flick influences in westerns
Multi-pleb-drifting
>>48115223
>Chung Kuo
I quite enjoyed that up until the point where it reset progress one too many times and I felt like it was never going to get anywhere. Not sure how many books I ultimately read: four... maybe five? I feel like it could've been amazing if it were condensed into a trilogy or something. It had some really cool ideas, but there was too much retreading old ground.
>>48120764
This guy knows whats up, space soviets are top tier.
>>48110109
And Sailor Moon is supposed be an Japanese schoolgirl.
Anyway Space communists isn't exactly unheard. Just look at the soviet spacecraft concept art works and you're pretty close.
>>48118682
No.
No fair criticism would be questioning why people 500 years in the future would be using slang and guns from the 1800s.
The Chinese shit is the least of this show's problems.
>>48110138
It has Chinese influence, but there was plenty of Chinese influence in the Wild West as well. That we think of it as unique to Firefly speaks more about how that part is ignored in all other westerns than anything.
That said, yes, in the backdrop of the setting it's clear that Chinese are a majority.
>>48121312
Still doesn't piss me off as much as people acting like no aliens was unique to Space opera.
>>48111742
Actors and directors are all that matters when it comes to series and movies. If both the actors and director are bad, then the show, regardless of plot or premise, will also be bad. If they are good, even a show or movie that sounds bad will turn out great.
>>48121384
Is this the film equivalent of "system doesn't matter, only the group does?"
'Cause any film nerd can point to many dozens of terrible movies that had great directors and casts. Brilliant directors with big name actors signed up have so often turned out bombs it's not even funny.
It takes more than a good group of people, everything else has to work right too, that goes for film AND tabletop.
>>48118693
>a space opera that's also part wuxia/silat movie inspired
>fighter-size spacecrafts be common and sophisticated enough to do lone voyages - while also being customizable as fuck.
So... Star Wars?
>>48115249
>Would the main characters pilot unique ships?
GUNDAMS
>>48115249
>lu bu
>no mount
LU BU RIDES ATOP THE RED HARE, THE FASTEST AND BEST OF ALL STEEDS
>>48110031
Empty.
The populations of men stopped breeding because they're too pussy to ask a girl out, and instead just fap to fantasy worlds where the women do all the work for them.
The women either killed themselves or turned gay because men need to do the work desu.
Sterility and suicide are what awaits Japan.
It's like a nation trying to get entry-level grimdarkness for access to 40k
>>48121560
>Oh god the population is on a downcurve, that means nobody's ever going to have a child again!
Stop being a retard.
>>48118693
So basically Outlaw Star.
>>48121454
Star Wars still has too many 'army vs army' kinda deal.
And the wuxia is integrated into the dogfights more. So for example >>48121477
Space Lu Bu rides on his trusty fighter, Red Hare, but he often neglects to buy fuel or wastes it on combat maneuvers. On the plus side he's without peer in his piloting skills.
>>48111369
DS9 was significantly better than the original series, and I would say that parts of it were definitely above B5. The problem is that it suffers from the same problem as every Star Trek where some episodes were Godly, and others were absolute Garbage.
The fact however that DS9 happened in a static place instead of just traveling to "Planet of the Week" brought quite a bit of consistency to it and so I would actually say that overall DS9 was the BEST Star Trek and was criminally under-rated because it didn't have enough waifu bait and was more complicated.
Garak alone brought that show into the Godly tier by being an awesome bastard.
Heck, overall the alien representations were definitely the most fleshed out and in depth representations of any Star Trek by far.
But yeah, Sisco "The Prophet" storyline was pretty painful at times. Still, they managed to show the Federation as serious fucking business when they wanted to be without going full Janeway.
Goddamn I remember finding a shopped pic of Kate Mulgrew back in the 90's, dressed up as a dominatrix. The quality was exceptional and for some reason it's stuck with me as one of the most erotically angry women I've ever seen.
>>48111304
Nothing can be Firefly tier, because nothing can ever hope to be as overhyped by die hard fans who still cry bitter tears over a decade later whilst being so utterly substandard in every way shape or form it's honestly a wonder it ever even got as far as it did before it got canned.
>>48110031
MOTHERFUCKER WHAT???
>>48110031
>What would a space opera be like if the dominant culture was Chinese or Japanese instead of American?
Either ROTK in space or Oda Nobunaga in space.
>>48121691
ah, pointless counterculture.
A fine vintage.
>>48121720
Yep, he appears to be a nerd hipster, the sort of hipster least likely to ever get laid. Rather tragic if you think about it.
>>48121705
I still have all of these on VHS.I still prefer the novels written by "Jack McKinney"
>>48121254
Her mother had purple, blue, pink or brown hair depending on which iteration she was.
Her best friends include two other blondes, a bluenette, dark green and aquamarine, her daughter has pink, her ancestor was silver and humanity has been confirmed as interbreeding with Mercurian elves, Luna fairies, space cats, space ravens and other aliens.
I think it's safe to say that whilst rare, blonde is a perfectly acceptable hair colour for a Japanese person.
Besides, she looked pretty much Japanese in the live action show.
>>48121705
>Robotech
>Only scenes from Macross
>No Invid
>No Masters
Drunk Dana does not approve!
>>48121667
The main thing DS9 had over the other Treks were the arcs. The problem is that it could never really commit to them for more than a few episodes, and it really paled in comparison to B5 in particular. It still had one foot firmly planted in Trek's traditional episodic nature and failed to keep the tension up or make things seem real enough on a long term basis.
Also, being stuck on a space station made the series seem stagnant at times, and it lacked the sense of excitement and adventure of Trek's previous incarnations. Babylon 5 transcended that problem with broad-scale, interstellar diplomacy. Babylon 5, itself, was just a microcosm and a focal point for much larger events. But while DS9 tried to do some of that kind of thing too, it was always halfhearted in comparison.
>DS9 was significantly better than the original series
TOS had an incredibly good character dynamic between the main characters. Sure, it had a lot of dumb shit, but it had energy and it was blazing new ground. DS9, on the whole, lacked very good character dynamics and ended up feeling a bit lifeless a lot of the time: like they were just going through the motions. That's not to say that none of the characters were good (though I do think that a lot of them were lackluster), just that they rarely "popped" when they interacted.
>Garak alone brought that show into the Godly tier by being an awesome bastard.
Garak, without a doubt, is the MVP of the show (with Dukat a close second, at least until they fucked him up towards the end). But even if you think he measures up to Londo, there's no dynamic to measure up to the Londo-G'kar dynamic that made B5 so incredible.
In many ways, DS9 *wants* to be the best Trek, but it just doesn't pull off all that it wants to. TOS and TNG are limited by their more confined, episodic nature, but they do a better job within those limitations (and episodic shows have a legitimate niche, even if they're less likely to sweep you away over the long haul).
>>48121812
That's brown hair in that picture, dude.
I don't know what you think Blonde is, but it ain't that.
Hint: Every time someone has light coloured hair in a manga, it's brown unless they're American. Have you ever even seen a Japanese person?
>>48121832
I feel that TOS was amazing if viewed through the lens of when it occurred and what it was competing against, but I feel like it hasn't aged terribly well. I mean, you can make an amazing building using 18th century architecture, but fuck me if it isn't going to really suck if it doesn't have central heating and running water.
I don't actually know much about 18th century architecture but I assume they didn't have that shit.
And yeah, I definitely agree with you re: B5, which is why I said PARTS of it were better. Like, I could go and find a few arcs and episodes that really stood out as amazing, but yeah B5 really did the overall arcs better and more consistently.
TNG had Wesley and Troi. Let's be honest, it was all fucking Picard and Riker in that show that carried it, and their dynamics with the other crew and antagonists/NPCs.
I would have to say that calling DS9 vs. TNG as the best Trek would have to come down to personal taste.
>The Chinese
>Ever accomplishing anything
Hah. The Chinese are doomed to have some sort of collapse every 100 or so years.
>>48121812
No you can't be blonde blue eyes and Japanese.
At best she's a Japanese version of a wigger. All her school friends are probably mildly embarrassed by her acting Nippon.
>>48121691
No show is perfect, and I can well understand reacting against anything that gets hyped a lot, but Firefly's approach to science fiction is unusual and it's a quality show, with plenty of good episodes, even though it just had a 14 episode run. Considering how long it takes some shows to find their feet (and how much stronger on average the last third of the show was compared to the first third), that's very respectable. I find that most haters who aren't just be anti-popularity contrarians (and there is some merit in keeping anything from getting too big for its britches) simply don't like the *kind* of show Firefly is. And that's fine. I don't care for romantic comedies. But you don't ask the guy who hates fish what he thinks of the smoked salmon at the restaurant you're in. You aren't going to get useful input as you and he just have different tastes.
>>48121833
You do know what Blonde looks like, right?
>Have you ever even seen a Japanese person?
Have you ever seen a Japanese person who's ancestry includes fairies?
Their crazy coloured hair in Sailor Moon is literally meant to be crazy coloured hair.
>>48121880
>TNG had Wesley and Troi
Wesley was obnoxious, but he fortunately didn't have a very big role in the show, overall. He wasn't in most of the episodes (which isn't to say that he didn't manage to basically ruin some episodes). Troi is pointless but generally unobtrusive. She doesn't ruin anything; she just doesn't bring a lot to the table.
>it was all fucking Picard and Riker
And Data, and Worf and Geordi. The best scenes in TNG were when the crew was sitting around the briefing table bouncing ideas back and forth. TNG tended to work best as an ensemble, and focusing too much on one character often brought down the level of quality of the show (granted, Picard and Riker were two of the stronger characters to solo, but that's mainly because there was little about them for the writers to get hokey about--like Data's feelings, Worf's rivers of blood and pain, and Geordi's woman problems).
>>48121882
They're pretty good at stealing shit from Westerners and bribing school teachers to get their kid a seat up front.
>>48121897
Again, humanity in the Sailor Moon Mythos has interbred with literal space aliens.
But even ignoring that, Naoko Takeuchi, the author, confirmed that their crazy hair colours were their actual hair colours, not just played up for artistic effect.
So whilst rare, being blonde, silver, pink, blue, green, purple or otherwise are perfectly acceptable for Japanese people.
>>48121924
>Have you ever seen a Japanese person who's ancestry includes fairies?
I... I thought that was all of them.
>>48121967
Oddly enough, I think that episodes that focus on Wesley are better than ones where he's there but not the focus.
The former tended to play him as more flawed/actually a child.
>Data's feelings
I enjoyed all the talk about Data's feelings. But then, I also laughed at Mr Tricorder so I might have something wrong with me.
>>48110255
>Lexx
>Garbage tier
Garbage taste.
>>48121880
>I would have to say that calling DS9 vs. TNG as the best Trek would have to come down to personal taste.
I used to think it was photo finish, but upon going back and rewatching them, I found TNG to be markedly superior. My friend actually went through and watched all the Star Treks for the first time just recently, and he thought Voyager edged out DS9. I was aghast at first, but he actually had some validity to his reasoning. He thought that DS9 was rather lifeless and found its arcs to be unimpressive in the modern context (where shows have become much more arc-y than they used to be). By contrast, Voyager was silly and inconsistent, but adventurous and fun. It entertained him in ways that DS9 did not.
Now, I don't agree with his ranking, but the very fact that I can see where he's coming from indicates a definite weakness in DS9. And he would never claim to prefer Voyager to TNG (and I would've laughed in his face if he did).
>I feel that TOS was amazing if viewed through the lens of when it occurred and what it was competing against, but I feel like it hasn't aged terribly well.
TOS is the best Trek by far, and also the worst by far--sometimes simultaneously. It has more retarded, cringy shit than any other Trek, without a doubt. But if you can look past it, there's amazing stuff too. It's similar to Babylon 5 in that regard.
>>48122049
>The former tended to play him as more flawed/actually a child.
Yeah, he was flawed, but in a cringy way that I don't want to have to watch. I'd rather he be an overpowered plot device if it means I don't have to put up with his personality much.
>>48122126
I dunno, I liked the ones with him fucking up at starfleet academy.
>>48121384
Plot matters. BSG had some great actors (particularly the older ones), and I can't think of any issues I had with the directing, but the show was trash because the writing was bad.
All hail the Union of Soviet Socialist Starsystems!
Soviet space era posters are great. I've read that science fiction was a very popular genre in the USSR.
>>48123300
Thank god marxism failed, what a bleak fucking future that would have been. Better to have just scrapped humanity at that point imo
More gommunism in spaaaace
>>48123304
Doubtful, probably were too hungry and malnourished to care about space adventures unless sci fiction to them was an iteration of communism that didn't result in them starving by the millions
>>48123330
I don't know what are you saying, this posters are super cool.
>>48123300
>>48123304
The best scifi is Soviet/Eastern bloc and I'm not just talking about the inspiring propaganda.
Americans just have no idea because it doesn't much appeal to their sentiments and most of it never got translated to English (but other European languages).
>>48123345
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_science_fiction_and_fantasy#Soviet_period
By the time that the space race started there was no malnutrition in the USSR, unlike China. In fact, calorie consumption per capita has dropped dramatically in Russia since 1989, you can check the data of the World Bank if you don't believe me.
>>48123377
>>48123345
A shocking lack of knowledge.
>>48123414
>>48121691
As someone who thinks Firefly is way overhyped, you're exaggerating bigtime. It's got a ton of flaws (Like the show has two characters. The crazy girl, and then everyone else is the same character), but it's still a fun, and enjoyable show. It gets the formula Whedon tried to do with Buffy, but does it well, instead of annoying.
>>48110778
>only android waifus/husbandos survive
That sounds like a solid base for an Engine Heart game.
>>48123449
>Like the show has two characters. The crazy girl, and then everyone else is the same character
Literally what?
>>48123496
I'm saying aside from a few quirks that are occasionally payed lip service, the characters all have the same exact smarmy, wise cracking personality, and most of the lines said in the show could be changed between them without it being out of character.
>>48123509
>>48122132
Didn't those episodes get made after Roddenberry passed away? Wesley was old Gene's personal Gary Stu, after all. He was the reason Wesley was so awful. The writers and directors would try to fix the character and make him more human, and Gene would nix it because Wesley had to be the best at everything and lecture the adults on how they were stupid and wrong.
>>48121426
>many dozens of terrible movies that had great directors and casts
I assure you that in very single one of those cases the director was actually a bad director.
>>48123509
I kind of get that they all have a smarmy baseline, but familiae, every last thing you said after that is so wrong.
>>48121426
>Cause any film nerd can point to many dozens of terrible movies that had great directors and casts. Brilliant directors with big name actors signed up have so often turned out bombs it's not even funny.
lol, are you talking about capeshit and otherblockbusters?
>>48125142
>>48123509
some quick definitions I googled for smarmy:
--behaving in a way that seems polite, kind, or pleasing but is not genuine or believable
--ingratiating and wheedling in a way that is perceived as insincere or excessive.
--Excessively ingratiating or insincerely earnest.
--Relating to or indulging in lewd conduct; smutty
Are you sure "smarmy" is the word you're looking for
>>48125327
Of course he is, it's not kino he's talking about
>>48125097
>no true scotsman
>>48125327
No, I'm talking about respectable directors and serious cinema. No film can ever be guaranteed to work out the way you hoped, there are far too many variables, beyond just the director and actors. Any book on film history will show you what I mean.
>>48110315
Amen, brother
>>48110255
No Space 1999? No Orion?
Are you a teenager, kiddo?
>>48126999
No Space Patrol? No Rocky Jones, Space Ranger? No Tom Corbett, Space Cadet? No Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers? No Captain Video and His Video Rangers? No Manly Mansford, Space Captain of the Rocket Cadet Ranger Patrol?
What are ya, some kind of yoot?
>>48121460
Underrated post
>>48123642
>mfw I read that in Jewel Staite's voice.
>There are people who actually like Firefly more than BSG
Firefly was good and all, but it only held its quality because it was killed off before Joss Whedon could drive it into the ground
>>48128094
>BSG
sorry, I wanted cool robot plot, with tinges of homeworld. Not some kind of goddamn space jesus shit.
>>48128094
It's a pretty small episode arc to judge from, but if anything, Firefly was getting stronger rather than weaker. Also, despite having a few really good qualities (like the grittiness and the acting, especially from the older folks), BSG was absolutely destroyed by its shortcomings (the cylons, as depicted, were terrible enemies; it was an arc-driven show, but it meandered all over the place because the writers clearly didn't know where things were going; and characterization and character development were thrown under the bus in favor of plot twists). So even if Firefly were merely mediocre, it would still kick BSG's ass.
>>48128193
>I wanted cool robot plot, with tinges of homeworld. Not some kind of goddamn space jesus shit.
So say we all.
>>48128249
My issue with Firefly's narrative was it was obvious they were building it up around River. Serenity makes this pretty clear.
Now unlike most people here, I don't hate River. But I found her really out of place because the story really didn't need her. At least not her super special secret psychic powers. I felt the universe didn't really need that, at least not in the way it occurred to me. She only really existed the way she did because Whedon can't help himself from inserting his weird teenaged girl tropes into everything he writes.
If they'd written her as some sort of Roy Batty/Khan Singh supersoldier I think it would have turned out better. Joss still could have gotten his guuurrrl power but in a much more appealing way than some waif with precognition and subconscious kung fu mastery.
Joss wrote Mal as the main character but clearly intended the spotlight for River.
>captcha knows
>>48110031
Literally Outlaw Star?
>>48128418
Through most of the series, I found River's craziness to be an annoyance, and it wasn't until Serenity where I felt like she really worked as a character. Of course, Serenity was obviously the end point of her character arc, and if there were to have been more episodes/movies, they wouldn't have taken her that far yet.
I also wasn't a big fan of Inara, and was meh at best on Book, but no show is perfect, and I feel like Firefly prospered despite its shortcomings (prospered in the sense of being good, not in the sense of not being canceled halfway through the first season, obviously).
>>48128541
I'm with you on that. I thought she worked well in Serenity, but not so much on the main show. I liked Book but he felt underused somehow.
>>48128541
I was also rather meh on Inara. I found her pretty wishy washy and her hoighty-toighty attitude was really presumptuous. I get it was her way of flirting with Mal, but it came off rather grating.
I liked Book though. His main problem was he really needed a lot of time to develop. There was obviously a lot to him he wasn't telling, but because of the limited run he never evolved beyond "friendly wise black man who gives sage advice"
>>48115875
Didn't honorable suicide get a negative reputation in the West only after Christianity (the theology behind it being that your life belonged to God as he created you and everything, therefore it wasn't yours to take) took hold? And even then you'd still find cases where it was romanticized?
>>48128856
The only one I can think of is Cato the Younger, but really it was just his autism that compelled him to Sudoku.
Guy tried to jump on his sword, slipped and disembowled himself. When he came to he had been sewn up so he went full REEEEEEE and ripped out the stitching and pulled his own guts out. Guy's powerlevel was off the charts
>>48129212
But it was seen as a massive fuck-you to Caesar, so he became a symbol of republicanism
>>48110031
Samurai 7 is one planet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrgRtDxn6FQ
>>48120893
space soviets are basically utopian communists, i imagine post scarcity soviet union would be comfy.
>>48131777
Heavenly trips of glorious truth
>no shortage of resources so everyone really does have an equal share
>everyone is comfortable and fed so no discontent, population proud of society
>no power gradient from dictators and party elite, so no iron rule of law
>post scarcity resources and manpower + Soviet monumental aesthetics = cool-ass giant stylised bronze statues everywhere
Would be comfy as fuck
>>48128856
Well yeah but Christianity pretty much is western culture
>>48110212
The Chinese influence is from the Gold Rush immigration in the 'Wild West.'
So, not superficial, but not the basis of the culture either.
>>48110212
>NO CHINESE CHARACTERS
omg how le problemeatic
Kill yourself.
>>48110031
The film "Message from Space"
>>48110212
>NO CHINESE CHARACTERS
Good thing race and culture are two different things.
>>48121882
"The three body problem" is some crazy good Chinese Sci-fi, but not really space opera. More hard Sci-fi.
I for one welcome our new Trisolarian overlords.
>>48137455
Fireflies not based off the old West, it's based off *westerns*.
A classic western rarely had a single Asian person in it even if it was it in a predominantly asian goldrush town.
Does that make it racist?.... Okay yes. But so is having brown coats romanticised Confederates and the Reivers every negative injun stereotype turned up to 1,000,000.
>>48139254
>the Reivers every negative injun stereotype turned up to 1,000,000.
You are leaning on the wild west metaphor way too hard and too literally, anon.
>>48110191
>>48110138
One of you is talking about the setting, the other one is talking about the spaceship the main cast are on. Neither one is wrong.
>>48110255
Literally worst list.
>>48110318
It becomes fun in a macabre sort of way when you accept the psycho Janeway theory.
That is, that Janeway is not only completely batshit insane, but also willfully trying to keep her crew stuck in the Delta Quadrant where she can have more "fun" lording over them and finding more and more ways to torture Harry Kim.
>>48125642
That's literally the whole crew.
>>48128249
The episode with the old war buddy made me fucking cry. It was def getting stronger at the end as it found itself; though it also couldn't really stay on air for long. Mal doesn't want to take down the Alliance; he just hates that he lost.
They did give him the best weapon to hit the Alliance - in Serenity - but all he does is hurt it, weaken it, for someone else to take it down or reform it (or both, contesting against each other), and he's content with that. His idealism died a long time ago, we're just along for the ride.
>>48141606
>That's literally the whole crew.
When has any of them ever been ingratiatingly flattering or exaggeratedly deferential? If anything, they're the opposite. They needle each other, make sarcastic remarks, and are prone to bickering.
>>48110031
What Chinese and Japanese sci-fi looks like? Has anybody here read modern fiction from Asia?
>>48141831
I've only read the fantasy xianxia webnovels, they're basically the standard powerwank thing - MC is weak, then MC finds something that lets him grind powerlevels like a boss, he proceeds to power up and gradually stomp everybody; then he moves to another region with higher level assholes and levelgrinds more; rinse&repeat.
>>48110043
bad bait
>>48141936
Try Skyfire Avenue. Its sci-fi xianxia but the MC's already a badass and kicking ass.
>>48142913
Tried it, the uber-rich pretentious dinner right in the opening killed the interest dead.
My current favourite is Sovereign of Three Realms, MC is super-wise sage reincarnated into a body of a minor noble son. His only hax is his knowledge, but main thing I like is that he isn't an immature twat like some other plots of this fashion end up.
>>48121882
>>48121974
Blame the Communists, you fucking ignorant mouthbreathing filthy turdnuggets, the Chinese basically invented everything.
>>48121985
> Sailor Moon is representative of all anime
Just. Just stop.
>>48122018
Nope, they're just ashole Koreans. The Ainu are the true Japanese.
Guess how well they get treated.
>>48123377
Kin dza-dza.
Kluu!
>>48142997
What. Where the fuck did you pull that L from. It was nowhere there in the original.
>>48142997
Kuu, stupid pacak
>>48128193
>>48128249
Don't get me wrong, I loved Firefly. I've loved most everything Whedon has done. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that he has a tenancy to write himself into a corner and take a nosedive towards the final season(s) of a show.
I'm not gonna sit here and try to explain to you why you should like BSG as much as I do, but BSG hit a number of my personal "I love this shit" buttons, too many to pretend I don't fucking love it, despite its shortcomings.
>>48110109
So you didn't get that half the language and culture was chinese, huh?
>>48113402
...I can dig it.
>>48143160
See, I very much like *aspects* of Whedon's other work, but I can't think of anything else he's done where the totality of the thing is more than just pretty decent. To me, Firefly is far and away the best thing he's done.
>that doesn't blind me to the fact that he has a tenancy to write himself into a corner and take a nosedive towards the final season(s) of a show.
You think? Buffy wasn't really the same by the end, but I respect Whedon for not just running the show into the ground by walking back and forth in the same rut. And really, a lot of the problem with later Buffy was the problem with Angel, which is that horror elements of the show were too cheesy for it to really work without more lightheartedness involved. You just can't take something hokey too seriously. But if we're talking about weak Buffy, the first season is the one that really stands out. Sure, the setup was good for the show, but it wasn't until you got partway through the second season before the quality of the show got where it needed to be.
Angel was, if anything, getting better at the end. And Dollhouse? I'm not really sure. I never made it past the first season because it really felt like the show was carefully designed not to take advantage of any of Whedon's strengths, but for sure, the show improved after the first handful of episodes--just not enough for my taste.
Of course, I think it's difficult for any show to remain good and fresh once you're past the first several seasons. Still, it takes many shows a while to find their feet, and Firefly did it right away, which is pretty impressive.
>I'm not gonna sit here and try to explain to you why you should like BSG as much as I do
That would surely be a waste of both of our times. I'm really not a fan, but at a certain point, you have to concede that different people have different taste and they all have a right to their own opinions.
How about journey west in space? All the demons are now aliens with amazing powers, and the monk an emissary of man to prove they are worthy to join the galactic federation. The scrolls from India are now plans to bring the human race to speed with the rest of the galaxy.
>>48135412
You say that like Space-Stalin wouldn't fuck that shit up something fierce.
>>48143327
So, I didn't watch Buffy when it actually aired. My (ex) girlfriend was a big fan, and so we watched every episode of that and Angel at least once, so I have a decent memory of what happened. I remember after season 5 (where from my understanding it was supposed to end) it got pretty stale. And the 90s camp was a little tough to swallow, even considering I grew up during that time.
I actually really, really liked Dollhouse. A lot more than I expected when I started. They spent all of Season 1 explaining the rules for how the science of all of it worked, and then they spent Season 2 coming up with work-arounds and loopholes for the technology, which came off as both really creative and consistent. Unfortunately, the final episode they tried to pull a Serenity 'wrap it up' sort of thing with 1/100th of the funding, flipped the setting to a (admittedly interesting) post-apoc in which 10 years had passed, and then kind of killed off a few people. Would've been awesome if they had a whole season to play around with it. Check it out if you like his other stuff, you might get drawn to it. Wash makes a great bad guy.
>>48141831
Shi-Kuo Chang wrote a bunch of them back in the 80s.
he have another serie coming out these days.
If you want Chinese Sci-fi
His works are the closest to it.
>SinoSpace
Earth Authority has successfully flooded once rebellious Outer Colonies with excess Earthers and made Terran Standard and the Earth calendar standard throughout inhabited space. However, the systems are hardly unified. The Authority juggles officials between the different systems to keep them from building up a power base that could destabilize their internal factions, and everyone is in bed with the megacorps that have no fixed single headquarters in space and are instead vast organizations spread out among the commercial fleets all throughout the inhabited systems. Whether on the outermost fringe or on Earth itself you are just as likely to find the protected and rights-having Workers who are in the place their households are registered as supposed to being, and the Migrants who left their designated homeworlds and have little to no legal protections.
So it is kind of like interstellar cyberpunk rather than centralized core vs. frontier outer colonies.
>>48143463
One of the bigger things about Buffy was that it had a continuing plot back when nobody ever did that. The whole "Previously on Buffy" thing was actually kind of revolutionary back then. I mean, I'm sure that some soap opera or something probably did it many years before, but Buffy is the first time I can think a show I watched really doing that. Sometimes they would do recaps for two-parters going back at least to 70s shows (like the Rockford Files), but those were very rare, special event sorts of things. Buffy was the first show I can remember doing it on a regular basis.
As a point of comparison, Babylon 5, which started a few years before Buffy, did not use "previously on this show" technology, and considering the sweeping plot arcs, it would really have benefited from it. So in many ways, Buffy was a step forward; it's just that were far enough past that point now that it no longer seems impressive.
Dollhouse didn't have much in the way of Whedonesque witty banter; the main characters were programmable zombies, so it was hard to get into them too much; and I found the whole set up to be too ludicrous to really get into. Also, while I don't have a problem with Dushku, she doesn't have the sort of acting range to pull off her character (contrast her with Tatiana Maslany from Orphan Black). The FBI(?) guy tracking Dushku's character joining the Dollhouse at the end of season 1 was the last straw for me. It made absolute no sense to me, and made the show's already forced reality strain even more. I think Dollhouse has an interesting premise, but not much beyond that.
>>48110031
>Nobody mentioning Bladerunner
Are you all literally retarded?
>>48143806
So I actually had the same complaints about Dollhouse, it really does get cooler in the second season. One of my favorite parts, they imprint that scientist Topher onto a doll so that he can have a second opinion on an issue, and the doll actor plays him spot fucking on.
>>48144684
Bladerunner is not in space.
>>48144684
that's cyberpunk, anon.
>>48131777
>>48135412
What does post-scarcity have to do with communists (IN SPAAAACE!!!)? Sure there's more stuff in space but resources are still finite; some people are going to get the short end of the stick no matter what. Post-scarcity is just a plot device created by Star Trek, not an actual thing.
>>48145273
Orthodox Marxism is all about the socialist state being a tool to work towards communism, which is basically full automation. Which also brings up an interesting conundrum to those damn degenerate infantile ultra-leftist Eclipse Phase anarchist types: AI having sentience and rights would completely ruin the Marxist dream of a workers' utopia built on the back of unpaid robot labor.
>>48145424
So communists (IN SPAAAAAACE!!!) would be human overlords ruling over an underclass of robot labourers? Neat. So once the robots get sentience, they too will become communist. Seeing as the humans have delegated everything to the robots, there'll be no chance to resist. Soon the robots will control the means of production, ensuring a utopia for all robots! Built on the backs of human labour of course.
One day, a human labourer in Production Factory #756901 gets a twinkle in his eye when he comes across an ancient book called the Communist Manifesto. "Why should the robot overlords enjoy the fruit of human labour?" A murmur of agreement is heard. Dangerous new ideas are spread, plots are hatched, merely waiting for the right time. Soon...They will be communists - IN SPAAAACCCEE!!!
>>48110031
> Japanese
Star Wars, replace "Jedi" with little girls piloting Gundams.
>>48145888
>female
>piloting a gundam
Pick exactly one. Girls don't get to pilot a gundam.
Unless of course it's a lesser handmedown after the main character gets an upgrade.
>>48145935
I'll go with Gundams.
But also, they hunt Space Godzillas instead of siths.
>>48144684
>Blade Runner
>Space Opera
I refer you to your own question.
>>48115875
Aren't the people who do it in Legend all characterized as Romanticizing morons who are more interested in their legacies than actually fighting and winning the war?
