The Guild, Serenity, Mal, and Inara
POSTED BY: Bytemite
UPDATED: Monday, January 15, 2024 00:21
VIEWED: 20583
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Oh, no worries about me. I'm working on Plan Bs, always preparing contingencies. Talking things over often helps me decide which direction I want to go if I'm hedging on something.
The only time we ever hear Priestess in canon is in terms of the House Priestess, it's true. It could be that companions are considered Priestesses as well, albeit apparently a step lower than a House Priestess. Certainly, Inara talks about her shuttle as a sacred place of union, and it seems like hierodule elements are a part of her career.
As a side note, I am highly amused just imagining Mal's reaction if he ever heard Inara describe the shuttle that way in his earshot...
Anyway. Even though the companion profession clearly has these elements, even though I concede that they MIGHT be considered priestesses, I'm not really sure companions are a religious figure in a legal sense. I don't believe they have legal authority to perform rites and rituals.
I do, however, think there may be men and women in the guild who DO have legal authority to perform religious ceremonies. Them I call Priestesses. And I also believe there may be High Priestesses, to help organize the guild on an inter-house level.
Nope, don't have the companions yet, but I mean to pick up both the series and the movie companions when I have the money to. <_< Or maybe for a Christmas present for myself.
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Quote:OK, I really need to find that book! I'll dig through my basement tonight.
Originally posted by UnabashedVixen:
Inara's contract, from the show (made for The Train Job) is in the companion too - the first volume. I recall thinking I needed to get a magnifying glass though...
*
People before profits
OK, as to our boy and his ship... Here I have a problem that my requirements for good character arcs and my requirements for happy endings and my requirements for an entertaining story are all different, so I can't settle my mind.
Of course, Mal "healing" and settling on a nice little ranch would be a proper kind of closure for him. But that bores me to tears. I agree with others here - it would have to be the last episode. Um, unless Joss pulled a Jossian miracle and made it interesting. Which he could surely do. I can't. I can't even imagine it. It's not entertaining, so I don't consider it. I have to keep the ship in play.
The happy-happy-lovey-dovey option has Mal and Inara finding love without compromising themselves or their chosen lives. I don't see this happening either, not in any easy way. I think they'd only find a life together after some big serious changes and hard knocks push them both out of their present paths. So then Inara keeping her job and Mal maintaining his... um, whatever it is he has/needs/will have, would be meaningless.
Let me try to explain more - I think that over seven seasons,
Select to view spoiler:
if Inara survived
some serious shakeups would have gone down. On the order of Buffy dying and coming back different and Spike getting a chip then a soul. You know, but without the witchcraft and stuff. But big serious season-long character changing arcs would have made the question of Inara's career moot. Could she work from Mal's ranch? Not an issue, because in season 4 the Guild turned out to be a secret rebel organization and she's no longer any part of it...
(Please, I'm not seriously suggesting that plot. Go with the spirit of it, not the detail.)
So, really, the whole question of: would Mal leave his ship or not? is overly simple to me. The real question is the nature of the serious shit that would happen to him, to them all, to change the game before the end. Sure, he might leave his ship, but why? What's the situation? It all depends on that.
Hmm. So I guess I see no solution for Mal and Inara if they live in a vacuum. Thank goodness the complicated Firefly `verse is there to push them around and make things different!
God, that is a terribly complicated response to a simple question. Sorry again!
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Oh, and the companion papers thread.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=2&t=37626
I see you just posted, one sec and lemee see what you've written.
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Complicated, but again, gives me something to think about.
...Heck, what COULD shake them out of the paths they're on? It'd almost have to be something systematic, because they're both too stubborn to let anything personal that might change their minds like, I dunno, FEELINGS maybe, get in the way of how they've chosen to live their lives.
And with Mal, there's not like any sort of systematic collapse that would remove criminal activity from the verse. Taken a notch lower, Mal loses his ship... Then what? He can't really buy another one, but maybe you're right, maybe I STILL don't see him giving up the risky criminal lifestyle. There's not a whole lot else he CAN be, or else he wouldn't have become a criminal in the first place.
It's starting to seem more and more like a completely hopeless doomed relationship, even if Inara's secret DOESN'T put an end to it first.
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Ooh, I think I know a way to make that interesting though. Should I say it? I think I might use it, it could be spoilers. <_<
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Yep, that was the thread I was looking for!
Quote:This confuses me. Why use the same title if it's something different?
Originally posted by Bytemite:
The only time we ever hear Priestess in canon is in terms of the House Priestess, it's true. It could be that companions are considered Priestesses as well, albeit apparently a step lower than a House Priestess.
Are you using the term "Priestess" to separate the spiritual leaders from the business side of things?
Quote:Oh yeah - that'd be a good face he'd make LOL!
Certainly, Inara talks about her shuttle as a sacred place of union, and it seems like hierodule elements are a part of her career.
As a side note, I am highly amused just imagining Mal's reaction if he ever heard Inara describe the shuttle that way in his earshot...
Quote:Hmm. I don't get that meaning out of the term "House Priestess." They do lean Buddhist, so while there's a strong spiritual side that the Priestess surely is there to represent, I don't think the Guild is as dependent on "rites and rituals" as, say, a Catholic organization would be.
Anyway. Even though the companion profession clearly has these elements, even though I concede that they MIGHT be considered priestesses, I'm not really sure companions are a religious figure in a legal sense. I don't believe they have legal authority to perform rites and rituals.
Which kind of ceremonies do you have in mind?
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Quote:I really have to run, but wanted to say... an example of what I'm imagining is River. Mal would have kept on keeping on if he hadn't had the Tams show up, then the Operative after him, then Miranda. Completely outside events that got in his face and made him change. And suddenly his little ship and his thieving ways aren't just a way to hide, but offer him a way to shake the whole damned `verse up.
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Complicated, but again, gives me something to think about.
...Heck, what COULD shake them out of the paths they're on? It'd almost have to be something systematic, because they're both too stubborn to let anything personal that might change their minds like, I dunno, FEELINGS maybe, get in the way of how they've chosen to live their lives.
And with Mal, there's not like any sort of systematic collapse that would remove criminal activity from the verse. Taken a notch lower, Mal loses his ship... Then what? He can't really buy another one, but maybe you're right, maybe I STILL don't see him giving up the risky criminal lifestyle. There's not a whole lot else he CAN be, or else he wouldn't have become a criminal in the first place.
It's starting to seem more and more like a completely hopeless doomed relationship, even if Inara's secret DOESN'T put an end to it first.
So maybe he doesn't need to leave his ship. Maybe he just needs more outside events to redefine his life for him. And redefine himself. He found his hero again, which he never would have done by himself.
Clearly, Joss had a similar plot in store for Inara. Big game-changing shit. A good fic will dig into that - not just have Mal and Inara in their bubble, and the writer forcing some favorite ending on them, but have the wider `verse do it.
Gotta go! Write more later, I'm sure. Curious as to your ideas...
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I think I've addressed your question about why have two different titles of Priestess, but if not, like I was saying, a House Priestess I think of as more like someone actually running a guild house, maybe by committee if the house is big enough. Whereas a priestess would be more like a companion, but legally authorized for performing ceremonies. And a High Priestess would operate between houses as necessary, devoted to facilitating communication and cooperation between guild strongholds and resolving disputes.
What kinds of ceremonies? I think of the sort of ceremonies that other priestesses of the sacred feminine could preside over. Coming of age ceremonies, fertility rituals, fertility IMPROVING rituals, blessings of marriage unions for clients or companions/former companions... I can think of a lot of aspects in the companion profession where some sort of guild new-age ideas might enter into the equation, and where the guild might seek to invest legal authority into a priestess figure.
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As to Mal... I don't know. I really see his heroism as THE most likely thing to get him killed. Granted, he'll make us all cheer or cry by the end, but still, dead.
And I don't know that he didn't have heroism before River or Simon, in fact I think that's one of the positive (and rarely occurring) sides of Mal that Inara became attracted to. I think he operated as a hero in the limited capacity that he could.
The movie may have made him larger than life, but I doubt he'd really become important in the verse after Miranda. For one, he'd have to keep quiet about it, he couldn't take credit for it and wouldn't want to. And while I do think some people would be smart enough to figure it out, it's not a platform Mal can use without serious repercussions. I see him post-movie as still very much the little fish, but he does at least have an ace (River's psychic ability). I don't really see him leading armies again or rousing the population at large into casting off the Alliance.
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Quote:But that's not the point. Mal being a hero is not about stepping up on a larger stage or leading armies. It's about him taking action for something besides day-to-day survival. Come on, it's all over the script: it's about him having *belief* again. Miranda gave him back the belief he'd lost in the war. (And, like Book, I am so not talking about God.)
Originally posted by Bytemite:
The movie may have made him larger than life, but I doubt he'd really become important in the verse after Miranda. For one, he'd have to keep quiet about it, he couldn't take credit for it and wouldn't want to. And while I do think some people would be smart enough to figure it out, it's not a platform Mal can use without serious repercussions. I see him post-movie as still very much the little fish, but he does at least have an ace (River's psychic ability). I don't really see him leading armies again or rousing the population at large into casting off the Alliance.
We've been talking about Serenity as a place to hide, where Mal avoids "real life" (whatever that is), and as such it was something he'd have to put behind him if he really wanted to get out of Serenity Valley. But when River brought him a cause, his ship became something else. *He* became something else, by fully rediscovering the leader he'd once been. His ship was no longer on inescapable reminder of the war. It became the means of achieving something important. It was redefined.
Yeah, I think that in the end location is meaningless. Mal can heal on his ship as much as he can anywhere else. And, as far as storytelling, the ship is a helluva lot more interesting than a stationary locale!
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