For one of the conventions I’m involved in, my role is to act as the organization’s liaison to the various fan groups who attend each year.
Initially, this mainly entailed keeping track of who had contacted us and assigning them table space on a first-come basis. Over time though, the position has evolved somewhat and I now find myself seeking groups out and inviting them to attend. (In some ways, this is very much about publicizing the event.)
One of the past year’s big movies from a fan perspective (for some, this was bigger than the final Star Wars) was a rather imaginative film called “Serenity.”
Part science-fiction and part cowboy movie, Serenity is a follow-on to the short-lived TV series Firefly and continues the story of a spaceship crew living “out on the raggedy edge.” Several members of Serenity’s crew are Browncoats – veterans from the losing side of a war between The Alliance (the oppressive central government) and the Independents (the worlds that didn’t want to become part of The Alliance).
Fans of the show and the movie have adopted the “Browncoat” label to describe themselves and their desire to keep the show alive after a series of questionable programming decisions by the Fox network caused Firefly to be cancelled after just 12 of its 14 episodes had aired. (Among Fox’s questionable judgments are decisions to show the episodes out of sequence and worse, not airing the pilot episode – where all the series’ groundwork is laid – until the last.)
The browncoat fan base has been so strong in fact that Universal Pictures made the decision to “greenlight” Serenity despite the poor ratings the Firefly series had received. Because of this, a few months ago, one of the committee members commented that “Wouldn’t it be great if we had the Browncoats there?”
So, I started out to find the browncoats. This was more challenging than you might suspect though, I’m only involved in one or two clubs myself and now I was setting out to make contact with a new one. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to find any browncoat clubs. Eventually I realized what was going on — they’re just like their counterparts in the movie! The Browncoats don’t join alliances! They’re all a bunch of independents!