by Chris Tobias

At 4:21am (EST) this Wednesday, fall will officially arrive in this hemisphere.  Fall means a lot of things to a lot of people.  Students (and teachers) go back to school.  Football season (both the American version and the one that fits the rest of the world’s definition) is in high gear again.  Our favorite TV shows (at least the ones that weren’t unjustly cancelled) are returning.  It’s a time for jeans-and-sweater weather, and of gathering around the fire pit for stories and roasted marshmallows after dark.  Halloween will be here before you know it.

In my part of the country, one of the things that makes fall so special is the turning of the leaves. By mid-October, the local landscape will be awash with myriad shades of gold, orange and red that will mix with the green of those few trees that refuse to let go of summer’s standard hue.  It’s a gorgeous sight, and one that’s always made me reluctant to relocate from this little patch of the ‘verse in Western Pennsylvania where I was born and raised.

As a Browncoat, it’s impossible for me to talk about leaves without thinking of the motion picture Serenity.  Anyone who’s seen the movie (and if you’re reading this on our website, I assume you have) will easily recall Wash’s mantra from the climactic battle between the Reavers and the Alliance, in which Serenity’s pilot deftly maneuvers the transport ship so as evade the ships from both sides that would prefer to see Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his crew end up as itty bitty shards.  Much to the shock and dismay of just about everyone who sees the film for the first time, that same mantra turns out to be the last words of Serenity’s beloved pilot:

Despite the fact that those words are associated with the death of Hoban Washburne, they have nonetheless been embraced by Browncoats everywhere, perhaps because they also speak to the indomitable spirit of the ship and its crew, a trait that fans of Firefly tend to share.  They have inspired hundreds of memes and enough fan art to fill Serenity’s cargo bay.  And back in 2013, they inspired us to start a unique campaign to help convince SpaceX to name their first Crew Dragon after Joss Whedon’s Serenity.

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