#Shan yu concept art free

The episode spends a lot of time on the state of his marriage, and his worries over the closeness of Zoe and Mal. The other major focus, of course, is Wash. The true Mal is a fighter, the some person who fought and lost the war, and in “War Stories” we get a brief glimpse of the kind of person who will come to the fore in Serenity, showcasing “something new” about his personality that others have not seen. When he asks a terrified Niska “You want to meet the real me now?” it’s both inspiring and terrifying: this bloodied angry individual, with murder on his mind, and a lot of pain to make up for.

#Shan yu concept art free

He doesn’t protest when Wash is given his freedom, and seems resigned to his own painful death, remaining chipper and sarcastic all the way to the finale, the only kind of resistance he can give.īut when given the opportunity, he is able to break free and showcase his own strength, which Niska could not eliminate totally. Niska is a sadist out to make an example and indulge in his own horrific interest, outside of any utterance that he is looking for the “real” Malcolm Reynolds, but we do get to see a very interesting side of Mal here: a man who looks out for others above himself, doing everything that he can to buoy up Wash’s spirits and prevent the pilot from breaking under the attacks, even to the point of enraging him.

Mal is the over-riding focus in the traditional Shan Yu sense, held over the volcano’s edge by Niska through prolonged physical torture: electroshock, cutting and that strange three pronged device. And “War Stories” has conflict to spare, and we see the true measure of Serenity’s crew in the crisis that unfolds. After all, such fiction can only exist with conflict, and with the depiction of how characters change in the course of conflict. Many would disagree with the idea, but Firefly, in “War Stories”, takes the thought and runs with it, as so much visual fiction does. The theme of the episode is set then, and we might put it in a more palatable way than Shan Yu did: Is the true measure of a person in their everyday deeds or in their actions during a crisis? That we only truly discover ourselves and what we are made of – our true levels of competence, capability and moral righteousness – in times of distress, worry, discomfort or peril is a sentiment that is nothing new. But the episode quickly jumps to the returning Adelai Niska from “The Train Job” discussing the same “warrior-poet” with one of his unfortunate victims. “War Stories” opens with Book discussing the man, in the words quoted above, with a distracted Simon, who doesn’t receive it very well: “Sadistic crap legitimised by florid prose” is how he describes it. “Shan Yu”, apparently some kind of despot from the timeline that Firefly takes place in, if not a reincarnation of a “Hun” warlord, does not sound like a very pleasant kind of guy. Then tie him up and hold him over the volcano’s edge, and on that day, you will finally meet the man.” Share his house, his meals, speak on every subject. Wrote volumes on war, torture, the limits of human endurance. Did you ever read the works of Shan Yu?…Fancied himself quite the warrior-poet.