Crazy Space Incest: Simon/River (Firefly)
Oct. 19th, 2004 02:47 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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ship_manifestoAuthor: T.W. Lewis
Spoilers: The whole series
Email: gardendoor @hotmail.com
Personal Website: The Gardendoor Fanfiction Archive
River (to Book): We want you to marry us.
Simon: What? We -- no! What?
River: Two by two. Everyone has a mate, a match, a dopple. I love you.
Simon: No, River, mei-mei, of course I love you too, but we can’t be married.
--Our Mrs. Reynolds
Incest is just about as squicky as you can get in fanfic. Carrie Fisher once said in an interview that only after Leia kissed Luke in Empire Strikes Back did George Lucas tell the two actors that the characters were brother and sister. She says they both immediately went “Ewww!” I’m not sure what Sean Maher and Summer Glau felt about the strange dynamic between Simon and River, but the tension in their relationship is not based on a fleeting kiss committed in ignorance, nor is it a case of fannish subtext run amuck. The tension seemed pretty clear long before the dvd revealed the cut scene from “Our Mrs. Reynolds” where River stuffs a pillow under her shirt and announces to all and sundry that she’s having Simon’s baby. We first meet River stark naked in her brother’s arms, and he apparently feels no concern about waltzing into her bedroom in “Objects in Space,” when it takes a full ten seconds for the camera to dip low enough to reassure us that he is wearing pants. Simon and River are the lynchpins of each other’s lives; they’ve made it clear that neither of them is willing to live without the other. Simon would rather be burnt at the stake with River than to survive her death. River tells Jubal Early she will be his bounty and go back to the Alliance rather than risk Early killing her brother.
Simon: River was more than gifted. She was ... a gift. Everything she did, music, Math, theoretical physics -- even dance -- there was nothing that didn’t come as naturally to her as breathing does to us. She could be a real brat about it, too. She used to tell me -- I mean, she’s a kid. You know? Like everyone else, except she understands. So much.
--Pilot
On some levels, River and Simon have a pretty normal, healthy brother-sister relationship. They tease each other, look after each other, and as we see in “Safe”, “Ariel” and the pilot, they are incredibly proud of each other’s intelligence and accomplishments. Despite River’s madness, the two of them have found a strange, shifting symbiosis, each filling in the other’s gaps: Simon is River’s connection to reality, both through his calm reassurance and through the drugs he gives her, but River is Simon’s instinct, warning him of danger he either can’t detect or won’t acknowlege (The Reaver in “Bushwhacked”, Jayne after “Ariel”, etc.). But both because of their circumstances and River’s unique problems, things rarely stay that simple for long.
River: You gave up everything you had to find me. And you found me broken.
--Safe
As the series evolves, we discover that River feels everything, not just everything in her own soul, but in everyone else’s as well. Even harder to bear, the part of her brain meant to stop her from acting on those emotions has been stripped away, and considering what a crack shot she is, it’s not clear what other tweaking has been done to her. The Alliance was making her into something and they were rudely interrupted before they could finish. She’s frightened and angry about the mess the Alliance made of her brain, not only for herself, but also for Simon, who was trying to rescue his baby sister and seems to have traded a life of privilege and professional challenge for a fugitive existence eked out on the ass end of the universe with a damaged psychotic. He’s essentially died for her, and she’s acutely aware that her madness makes it an unfair trade. She owes him happiness. It’s clear she is capable of love, self-sacrifice, anger, fear, practical jokes, but her every thought is translated, uncensored, into action, from tearing the labels off of cans to knifing Jayne. In “Objects in Space,” she feels left out of the relationship between Simon and Kaylee, and drowns despite herself in the sexual tension between Wash and Zoe. On her good days, River is joyful and brilliant, everything Simon cherished. On her bad days, she’s an open wound.
Gabriel Tam: I always thought it was River who was lost without her big brother... now I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t the other way ‘round.
--Safe
Simon’s whole world revolves around River, her freedom, her sanity, her happiness. Everything else is secondary. Rather than feel threatened by the fact that, gifted as he is, his younger sister will always be smarter than him, he takes joy from it. He’s the one who noticed when she stopped writing letters, when she wrote in code, despite his parents’ assurances that everything was fine. Even after being arrested, he never gave up looking, sacrificed his whole life for her freedom, was even ready to kill a Fed to save her. He’s incapable of blaming her for his current situation; even in his head, he never finishes his sentence, “I would be there right now…” She can do no wrong in his eyes; even when everyone on the ship is disturbed by her telepathy and her killing abilities, he argues passionately in her defense. While he does seem interested in a relationship with Kaylee, in “The Message,” he blurts out that the main reason he’s with her is because any other relationship would be incest, adultery or soliciting. Kaylee is Simon’s outlet; it could be argued that he’s using her to channel his feelings for River, knowing that River’s empathy, lack of control and younger-sibling status make the idea of a consensual relationship ludicrous. But River has no outlet, no divided focus for her attention, and no way to stop saying or acting on how she feels, or how Simon feels, for that matter. She can’t separate out what’s appropriate from the whole of what’s there. And in the end, she’s right: The Alliance will never stop looking for them. Simon will never fully fix what’s wrong inside her head, never be relieved of his charge. In the end, all they have is each other.
It’s a stolen moment pairing, it’s wrong, it’s inappropriate, a relationship both necessary and destructive to the characters. It’s not a kinky pairing; the fic tends more towards trying to explain and understand Simon and River as the series seems to portray them. It’s not about getting off on a taboo; the characters have no interest in pushing boundaries in any part of their lives. The first Simon/River fics I read, “Eros and Agape” and “Invisible Lines of Propriety”, have no actual sex in them, they’re purely in River’s head as she struggles to understand how to behave, and I’d say those two are perhaps the best River/Simon stories I’ve read.
Fic recs:
http://ljconstantine.com/fanfic/eros.htm
http://www.livejournal.com/community/ff_friday/105633.html
http://www.voyeuse.net/xm/casualties.html
http://www.unfitforsociety.net/musesfool/noreverchaste.htm
http://emungere.animeglore.com/fic/growing_up.html
http://www.unfitforsociety.net/remix03/logos.htm
http://firefly.populli.org/archive/1/tourniquet.shtml
Spoilers: The whole series
Email: gardendoor @hotmail.com
Personal Website: The Gardendoor Fanfiction Archive
River (to Book): We want you to marry us.
Simon: What? We -- no! What?
River: Two by two. Everyone has a mate, a match, a dopple. I love you.
Simon: No, River, mei-mei, of course I love you too, but we can’t be married.
--Our Mrs. Reynolds
Incest is just about as squicky as you can get in fanfic. Carrie Fisher once said in an interview that only after Leia kissed Luke in Empire Strikes Back did George Lucas tell the two actors that the characters were brother and sister. She says they both immediately went “Ewww!” I’m not sure what Sean Maher and Summer Glau felt about the strange dynamic between Simon and River, but the tension in their relationship is not based on a fleeting kiss committed in ignorance, nor is it a case of fannish subtext run amuck. The tension seemed pretty clear long before the dvd revealed the cut scene from “Our Mrs. Reynolds” where River stuffs a pillow under her shirt and announces to all and sundry that she’s having Simon’s baby. We first meet River stark naked in her brother’s arms, and he apparently feels no concern about waltzing into her bedroom in “Objects in Space,” when it takes a full ten seconds for the camera to dip low enough to reassure us that he is wearing pants. Simon and River are the lynchpins of each other’s lives; they’ve made it clear that neither of them is willing to live without the other. Simon would rather be burnt at the stake with River than to survive her death. River tells Jubal Early she will be his bounty and go back to the Alliance rather than risk Early killing her brother.
Simon: River was more than gifted. She was ... a gift. Everything she did, music, Math, theoretical physics -- even dance -- there was nothing that didn’t come as naturally to her as breathing does to us. She could be a real brat about it, too. She used to tell me -- I mean, she’s a kid. You know? Like everyone else, except she understands. So much.
--Pilot
On some levels, River and Simon have a pretty normal, healthy brother-sister relationship. They tease each other, look after each other, and as we see in “Safe”, “Ariel” and the pilot, they are incredibly proud of each other’s intelligence and accomplishments. Despite River’s madness, the two of them have found a strange, shifting symbiosis, each filling in the other’s gaps: Simon is River’s connection to reality, both through his calm reassurance and through the drugs he gives her, but River is Simon’s instinct, warning him of danger he either can’t detect or won’t acknowlege (The Reaver in “Bushwhacked”, Jayne after “Ariel”, etc.). But both because of their circumstances and River’s unique problems, things rarely stay that simple for long.
River: You gave up everything you had to find me. And you found me broken.
--Safe
As the series evolves, we discover that River feels everything, not just everything in her own soul, but in everyone else’s as well. Even harder to bear, the part of her brain meant to stop her from acting on those emotions has been stripped away, and considering what a crack shot she is, it’s not clear what other tweaking has been done to her. The Alliance was making her into something and they were rudely interrupted before they could finish. She’s frightened and angry about the mess the Alliance made of her brain, not only for herself, but also for Simon, who was trying to rescue his baby sister and seems to have traded a life of privilege and professional challenge for a fugitive existence eked out on the ass end of the universe with a damaged psychotic. He’s essentially died for her, and she’s acutely aware that her madness makes it an unfair trade. She owes him happiness. It’s clear she is capable of love, self-sacrifice, anger, fear, practical jokes, but her every thought is translated, uncensored, into action, from tearing the labels off of cans to knifing Jayne. In “Objects in Space,” she feels left out of the relationship between Simon and Kaylee, and drowns despite herself in the sexual tension between Wash and Zoe. On her good days, River is joyful and brilliant, everything Simon cherished. On her bad days, she’s an open wound.
Gabriel Tam: I always thought it was River who was lost without her big brother... now I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t the other way ‘round.
--Safe
Simon’s whole world revolves around River, her freedom, her sanity, her happiness. Everything else is secondary. Rather than feel threatened by the fact that, gifted as he is, his younger sister will always be smarter than him, he takes joy from it. He’s the one who noticed when she stopped writing letters, when she wrote in code, despite his parents’ assurances that everything was fine. Even after being arrested, he never gave up looking, sacrificed his whole life for her freedom, was even ready to kill a Fed to save her. He’s incapable of blaming her for his current situation; even in his head, he never finishes his sentence, “I would be there right now…” She can do no wrong in his eyes; even when everyone on the ship is disturbed by her telepathy and her killing abilities, he argues passionately in her defense. While he does seem interested in a relationship with Kaylee, in “The Message,” he blurts out that the main reason he’s with her is because any other relationship would be incest, adultery or soliciting. Kaylee is Simon’s outlet; it could be argued that he’s using her to channel his feelings for River, knowing that River’s empathy, lack of control and younger-sibling status make the idea of a consensual relationship ludicrous. But River has no outlet, no divided focus for her attention, and no way to stop saying or acting on how she feels, or how Simon feels, for that matter. She can’t separate out what’s appropriate from the whole of what’s there. And in the end, she’s right: The Alliance will never stop looking for them. Simon will never fully fix what’s wrong inside her head, never be relieved of his charge. In the end, all they have is each other.
It’s a stolen moment pairing, it’s wrong, it’s inappropriate, a relationship both necessary and destructive to the characters. It’s not a kinky pairing; the fic tends more towards trying to explain and understand Simon and River as the series seems to portray them. It’s not about getting off on a taboo; the characters have no interest in pushing boundaries in any part of their lives. The first Simon/River fics I read, “Eros and Agape” and “Invisible Lines of Propriety”, have no actual sex in them, they’re purely in River’s head as she struggles to understand how to behave, and I’d say those two are perhaps the best River/Simon stories I’ve read.
Fic recs:
http://ljconstantine.com/fanfic/eros.htm
http://www.livejournal.com/community/ff_friday/105633.html
http://www.voyeuse.net/xm/casualties.html
http://www.unfitforsociety.net/musesfool/noreverchaste.htm
http://emungere.animeglore.com/fic/growing_up.html
http://www.unfitforsociety.net/remix03/logos.htm
http://firefly.populli.org/archive/1/tourniquet.shtml
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