In Which I Do A Meme: Canon Qualities

[zelda_queen]

From ladyhadhafang



Pick a character and I will give and explain the top five ideas/concepts/etc I keep in mind while writing that character that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them. Any and all characters welcome ( including ones I haven't written but might know about...)

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Comments

unfortunatespellingmistake

[(Anonymous)]

River Tam from Firefly.

Re: unfortunatespellingmistake

[zelda-queen.livejournal.com]

1.) River is extremely innovative and imaginative. We see her love of dancing, but the movie shows us that she also applies her dancing to her fighting techniques, adapting the twirls and kicks so that she can knock out the bar patrons and Reavers.

2.) She hates being helpless and dependent on her brother and the crew of Serenity. She feels bad that her brother had to give up his promising medical career to look after her, and tries to protect him and the crew when they're in danger. This is most obvious in the climax of the movie ("You've taken care of me. You've always taken care of me. My turn."), but we also see it in Objects in Space (she saves Kaylee and instructs Mal on how to rid the ship of Early).

3.) Because of her damaged head, River doesn't always realize how the things she says will look to other people. For example, when the superstitious townsfolk are going to hang them and the mayor of the town is about to save them, River spouts off information about dirty dealings that the mayor was into. Not only does this not help at all, but it gives the mayor a reason to change his mind and agree to hang them. On a more humorous side, there is River's mixing up of a sister's love for a brother and a wife's love for a husband (when she tries to get Simon to marry her) and her fears that the preacher's vast amounts of hair will cause his head to cave in.

4.) River is a curious person. It ties in with her love of learning new things. Case in point, her constantly spying on members of the ship, and her cheerfully wondering about how childbirth works in "Heart of Gold".

5.) She is not the sort of person who lets herself be hurt or taken advantage of. In the very first episode, we find out that Simon knew to save her from the Academy because she wrote coded notes to him. In Ariel, she tries to distract the guards while working to free herself from handcuffs. It doesn't work, but the movie shows that it's a skill that she does know, and likely her failure to do it was tied to her mixed-up mental state. Her shining moment would be Objects in Space, where she keeps herself safe from Early from start to finish. She hides as soon as he gets on board, she stays hidden, and is thus able to turn the tables on him. Inara even says that there's no way Early could find River, unless she voluntarily revealed herself.