★ ── ˙ AOEN LOCKSCREENS; SIMPLE 🩵 ̟ !!

I was drawing Takahiro's ref but I ended up getting this idea lol

Le tags💖

Blue monday

Alan Friedman

i think the blue sun corporation, at this point, is fairly infamous as a major plot thread in firefly that never really got the chance to be unraveled, even in the film. it's a mega corporation that is quite casually advertised throughout the franchise without ever specifically being emphasized/focused on. whedon apparently described it as a combination between microsoft and coca cola, according to the wiki page - the gist being, i think, that it is so influential as to be near-ubiquitous throughout the 'verse. or as river puts it in the shooting script:

i find it interesting that river's initial agitation seems to come about because "everybody sees and nobody sees it." while i don't know that's ever made explicitly clear how, exactly, blue sun is reportedly supposed to have had ties to the academy and likely the alliance government at large.

it does seem, based on some of the language river uses, that we're supposed to intuit that blue sun was actively involved with/possibly running the academy, rather than just funding it or being tangentially related. she says here that "these are the ones that take you", and i think it's likely that, here, she's talking about the men with the "hands of blue" we know are looking for her. regardless, blue sun has direct ties with the organization that hurt and exploited her so badly, and to see it everywhere - on their food cans, of all things - is clearly quite emotionally triggering for her. "they're the ones that reach in and do it," after all - and i do wonder if this is supposed to be a reference to the fact that they stripped her amygdala at the academy?

it's hard to make sense entirely of what river is saying here, because she's distraught, not always putting full sentences together, some things she's saying very quietly and others very loudly, and the camera pulls away from her at a few points. on the surface, it seems like she's saying she's afraid - which certainly isn't untrue. she clearly is afraid of the blue sun and the hands of blue. but the shooting script (and i do actually think she says this is in the episode itself, too, it's just not captured in the captions) has her say:

the blue sun's roots, she seems to be saying, are everywhere, to the point where there's probably branded toothpaste with the logo on it. and she's afraid not just for the harm they've caused her (or at least been a part of/culpable in) but for the ubiquity of the corporation, how no one says anything - sometimes because they don't see the influence, it's so common, but sometimes they do "but no one says it because, because sometimes they're afraid."