title: Book

text: Modern bound books are organized according to a particular format called the book's "layout". Although there is great variation in layout, modern books tend to adhere to a set of rules with regard to what the parts of the layout are and what their content usually includes. A basic layout will include a "front cover", a "back cover" and the book's content which is called its "body copy" or "content pages". The front cover often bears the book's title (and subtitle, if any) and the name of its author or editor(s). The "inside front cover" page is usually left blank in both hardcover and paperback books. The next section, if present, is the book's "front matter", which includes all textual material after the front cover but not part of the book's content such as a foreword, a dedication, a table of contents and publisher data such as the book's edition or printing number and place of publication. Between the body copy and the back cover goes the "end matter" which would include any indices, sets of tables, diagrams, glossaries or lists of cited works (though an edited book with several authors usually places cited works at the end of each authored chapter). The "inside back cover" page, like that inside the front cover, is usually blank. The "back cover" is the usual place for the book's ISBN and maybe a photograph of the author(s)/ editor(s), perhaps with a short introduction to them. Also here often appear plot summaries, barcodes and excerpted reviews of the book.


title: Book

text: The body of the books is usually divided into parts, chapters, sections and sometimes subsections that are composed of at least a paragraph or more.


title: Book

text: Some books, particularly those with shorter runs (i.e. with fewer copies) will be printed on sheet-fed offset presses, but most books are now printed on web presses, which are fed by a continuous roll of paper, and can consequently print more copies in a shorter time. As the production line circulates, a complete "book" is collected together in one stack of pages, and another machine carries out the folding, pleating, and stitching of the pages into bundles of signatures (sections of pages) ready to go into the gathering line. Note that the pages of a book are printed two at a time, not as one complete book. Excess numbers are printed to make up for any spoilage due to make-readies or test pages to assure final print quality.


title: Book

text: A "make-ready" is the preparatory work carried out by the pressmen to get the printing press up to the required quality of impression. Included in make-ready is the time taken to mount the plate onto the machine, clean up any mess from the previous job, and get the press up to speed. As soon as the pressman decides that the printing is correct, all the make-ready sheets will be discarded, and the press will start making books. Similar make readies take place in the folding and binding areas, each involving spoilage of paper.


title: Book

text: After the signatures are folded and gathered, they move into the bindery. In the middle of last century there were still many trade binders – stand-alone binding companies which did no printing, specializing in binding alone. At that time, because of the dominance of letterpress printing, typesetting and printing took place in one location, and binding in a different factory. When type was all metal, a typical book's worth of type would be bulky, fragile and heavy. The less it was moved in this condition the better: so printing would be carried out in the same location as the typesetting. Printed sheets on the other hand could easily be moved. Now, because of increasing computerization of preparing a book for the printer, the typesetting part of the job has flowed upstream, where it is done either by separately contracting companies working for the publisher, by the publishers themselves, or even by the authors. Mergers in the book manufacturing industry mean that it is now unusual to find a bindery which is not also involved in book printing (and vice versa).


title: Book

text: If the book is a hardback its path through the bindery will involve more points of activity than if it is a paperback. Unsewn binding, is now increasingly common. The signatures of a book can also be held together by "Smyth sewing" using needles, "McCain sewing", using drilled holes often used in schoolbook binding, or "notch binding", where gashes about an inch long are made at intervals through the fold in the spine of each signature. The rest of the binding process is similar in all instances. Sewn and notch bound books can be bound as either hardbacks or paperbacks.


title: Book

text: "Making cases" happens off-line and prior to the book's arrival at the binding line. In the most basic case-making, two pieces of cardboard are placed onto a glued piece of cloth with a space between them into which is glued a thinner board cut to the width of the spine of the book. The overlapping edges of the cloth (about 5/8" all round) are folded over the boards, and pressed down to adhere. After case-making the stack of cases will go to the foil stamping area for adding decorations and type.


title: Book

text: Recent developments in book manufacturing include the development of digital printing. Book pages are printed, in much the same way as an office copier works, using toner rather than ink. Each book is printed in one pass, not as separate signatures. Digital printing has permitted the manufacture of much smaller quantities than offset, in part because of the absence of make readies and of spoilage. One might think of a web press as printing quantities over 2000, quantities from 250 to 2000 being printed on sheet-fed presses, and digital presses doing quantities below 250. These numbers are of course only approximate and will vary from supplier to supplier, and from book to book depending on its characteristics. Digital printing has opened up the possibility of print-on-demand, where no books are printed until after an order is received from a customer.


title: Book

text: In the 2000s, due to the rise in availability of affordable handheld computing devices, the opportunity to share texts through electronic means became an appealing option for media publishers. Thus, the "ebook" was made. The term ebook is a contraction of "electronic book"; it refers to a book-length publication in digital form. An ebook is usually made available through the internet, but also on CD-ROM and other forms. Ebooks may be read either via a computing device with an LED display such as a traditional computer, a smartphone or a tablet computer; or by means of a portable e-ink display device known as an ebook reader, such as the Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo eReader, or the Amazon Kindle. Ebook readers attempt to mimic the experience of reading a print book by using this technology, since the displays on ebook readers are much less reflective.


title: Book

text: Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various components of a book into a coherent whole. In the words of Jan Tschichold, book design "though largely forgotten today, methods and rules upon which it is impossible to improve have been developed over centuries. To produce perfect books these rules have to be brought back to life and applied." Richard Hendel describes book design as "an arcane subject" and refers to the need for a context to understand what that means. Many different creators can contribute to book design, including graphic designers, artists and editors.


title: Book

text: The size of a modern book is based on the printing area of a common flatbed press. The pages of type were arranged and clamped in a frame, so that when printed on a sheet of paper the full size of the press, the pages would be right side up and in order when the sheet was folded, and the folded edges trimmed.


title: Book

text: The largest extant medieval manuscript in the world is Codex Gigas 92 × 50 × 22 cm. The world's largest book is made of stone and is in Kuthodaw Pagoda (Burma).


title: Book

text: A common separation by content are fiction and non-fiction books. This simple separation can be found in most collections, libraries, and bookstores. There are other types such as books of sheet music.


title: Book

text: Many of the books published today are "fiction", meaning that they contain invented material, and are creative literature. Other literary forms such as poetry are included in the broad category. Most fiction is additionally categorized by literary form and genre.


title: Book

text: The novel is the most common form of fiction book. Novels are stories that typically feature a plot, setting, themes and characters. Stories and narrative are not restricted to any topic; a novel can be whimsical, serious or controversial. The novel has had a tremendous impact on entertainment and publishing markets. A novella is a term sometimes used for fiction prose typically between 17,500 and 40,000 words, and a novelette between 7,500 and 17,500. A short story may be any length up to 10,000 words, but these word lengths vary.


title: Book

text: Comic books or graphic novels are books in which the story is illustrated. The characters and narrators use speech or thought bubbles to express verbal language.


title: Book

text: Non-fiction books are in principle based on fact, on subjects such as history, politics, social and cultural issues, as well as autobiographies and memoirs. Nearly all academic literature is non-fiction. A reference book is a general type of non-fiction book which provides information as opposed to telling a story, essay, commentary, or otherwise supporting a point of view.


title: Book

text: An almanac is a very general reference book, usually one-volume, with lists of data and information on many topics. An encyclopedia is a book or set of books designed to have more in-depth articles on many topics. A book listing words, their etymology, meanings, and other information is called a dictionary. A book which is a collection of maps is an atlas. A more specific reference book with tables or lists of data and information about a certain topic, often intended for professional use, is often called a handbook. Books which try to list references and abstracts in a certain broad area may be called an index, such as "Engineering Index", or abstracts such as chemical abstracts and biological abstracts.


title: Book

text: Books with technical information on how to do something or how to use some equipment are called instruction manuals. Other popular how-to books include cookbooks and home improvement books.


title: Book

text: Many types of book are private, often filled in by the owner, for a variety of personal records. Elementary school pupils often use workbooks, which are published with spaces or blanks to be filled by them for study or homework. In US higher education, it is common for a student to take an exam using a blue book.


title: Book

text: There is a large set of books that are made only to write private ideas, notes, and accounts. These books are rarely published and are typically destroyed or remain private. Notebooks are blank papers to be written in by the user. Students and writers commonly use them for taking notes. Scientists and other researchers use lab notebooks to record their notes. They often feature spiral coil bindings at the edge so that pages may easily be torn out.


title: Book

text: Address books, phone books, and calendar/appointment books are commonly used on a daily basis for recording appointments, meetings and personal contact information. Books for recording periodic entries by the user, such as daily information about a journey, are called logbooks or logs. A similar book for writing the owner's daily private personal events, information, and ideas is called a diary or personal journal. Businesses use accounting books such as journals and ledgers to record financial data in a practice called bookkeeping (now usually held on computers rather than in hand-written form).


title: Book

text: There are several other types of books which are not commonly found under this system. Albums are books for holding a group of items belonging to a particular theme, such as a set of photographs, card collections, and memorabilia. One common example is stamp albums, which are used by many hobbyists to protect and organize their collections of postage stamps. Such albums are often made using removable plastic pages held inside in a ringed binder or other similar holder. Picture books are books for children with pictures on every page and less text (or even no text).


title: Book

text: Hymnals are books with collections of musical hymns that can typically be found in churches. Prayerbooks or missals are books that contain written prayers and are commonly carried by monks, nuns, and other devoted followers or clergy. Lap books are a learning tool created by students.


title: Book

text: A leveled book collection is a set of books organized in levels of difficulty from the easy books appropriate for an emergent reader to longer more complex books adequate for advanced readers. Decodable readers or books are a specialized type of leveled books that use decodable text only including controlled lists of words, sentences and stories consistent with the letters and phonics that have been taught to the emergent reader. New sounds and letters are added to higher level decodable books, as the level of instruction progresses, allowing for higher levels of accuracy, comprehension and fluency.


title: Book

text: Hardcover books have a stiff binding. Paperback books have cheaper, flexible covers which tend to be less durable. An alternative to paperback is the glossy cover, otherwise known as a dust cover, found on magazines, and comic books. Spiral-bound books are bound by spirals made of metal or plastic. Examples of spiral-bound books include teachers' manuals and puzzle books (crosswords, sudoku).


title: Book

text: Publishing is a process for producing pre-printed books, magazines, and newspapers for the reader/user to buy.


title: Book

text: Publishers may produce low-cost, pre-publication copies known as galleys or 'bound proofs' for promotional purposes, such as generating reviews in advance of publication. Galleys are usually made as cheaply as possible, since they are not intended for sale.


title: Book

text: Dummy books (or faux books) are books that are designed to imitate a real book by appearance to deceive people, some books may be whole with empty pages, others may be hollow or in other cases, there may be a whole panel carved with spines which are then painted to look like books, titles of some books may also be fictitious.


title: Book

text: There are many reasons to have dummy books on display such as; to allude visitors of the vast wealth of information in their possession and to inflate the owner's appearance of wealth, to conceal something, for shop displays or for decorative purposes.


title: Book

text: In early 19th century at Gwrych Castle, North Wales, Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh was known for his vast collection of books at his library, however, at the later part of that same century, the public became aware that parts of his library was a fabrication, dummy books were built and then locked behind glass doors to stop people from trying to access them, from this a proverb was born, "Like Hesky's library, all outside".


title: Book

text: Private or personal libraries made up of non-fiction and fiction books, (as opposed to the state or institutional records kept in archives) first appeared in classical Greece. In the ancient world, the maintaining of a library was usually (but not exclusively) the privilege of a wealthy individual. These libraries could have been either private or public, i.e. for people who were interested in using them. The difference from a modern public library lies in that they were usually not funded from public sources. It is estimated that in the city of Rome at the end of the 3rd century there were around 30 public libraries. Public libraries also existed in other cities of the ancient Mediterranean region (for example, Library of Alexandria). Later, in the Middle Ages, monasteries and universities also had libraries that could be accessible to the general public. Typically not the whole collection was available to the public; the books could not be borrowed and often were chained to reading stands to prevent theft.


title: Book

text: The beginning of the modern public library begins around 15th century when individuals started to donate books to towns. The growth of a public library system in the United States started in the late 19th century and was much helped by donations from Andrew Carnegie. This reflected classes in a society: the poor or the middle class had to access most books through a public library or by other means, while the rich could afford to have a private library built in their homes. In the United States the Boston Public Library 1852 "Report of the Trustees" established the justification for the public library as a tax-supported institution intended to extend educational opportunity and provide for general culture.


title: Book

text: The advent of paperback books in the 20th century led to an explosion of popular publishing. Paperback books made owning books affordable for many people. Paperback books often included works from genres that had previously been published mostly in pulp magazines. As a result of the low cost of such books and the spread of bookstores filled with them (in addition to the creation of a smaller market of extremely cheap used paperbacks), owning a private library ceased to be a status symbol for the rich.


title: Book

text: The development of libraries has prompted innovations to help store and organize books on shelves. In library and booksellers' catalogues, it is common to include an abbreviation such as "Crown 8vo" to indicate the paper size from which the book is made. When rows of books are lined on a book holder, bookends are sometimes needed to keep them from slanting.


title: Book

text: During the 20th century, librarians were concerned about keeping track of the many books being added yearly to the Gutenberg Galaxy. Through a global society called the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), they devised a series of tools including the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD). Each book is specified by an International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, which is unique to every edition of every book produced by participating publishers, worldwide. It is managed by the ISBN Society. An ISBN has four parts: the first part is the country code, the second the publisher code, and the third the title code. The last part is a check digit, and can take values from 0–9 and X (10). The EAN Barcodes numbers for books are derived from the ISBN by prefixing 978, for Bookland, and calculating a new check digit.


title: Book

text: Commercial publishers in industrialized countries generally assign ISBNs to their books, so buyers may presume that the ISBN is part of a total international system, with no exceptions. However, many government publishers, in industrial as well as developing countries, do not participate fully in the ISBN system, and publish books which do not have ISBNs. A large or public collection requires a catalogue. Codes called "call numbers" relate the books to the catalogue, and determine their locations on the shelves. Call numbers are based on a Library classification system. The call number is placed on the spine of the book, normally a short distance before the bottom, and inside. Institutional or national standards, such as ANSI/NISO Z39.41 – 1997, establish the correct way to place information (such as the title, or the name of the author) on book spines, and on "shelvable" book-like objects, such as containers for DVDs, video tapes and software.


title: Book

text: One of the earliest and most widely known systems of cataloguing books is the Dewey Decimal System. Another widely known system is the Library of Congress Classification system. Both systems are biased towards subjects which were well represented in US libraries when they were developed, and hence have problems handling new subjects, such as computing, or subjects relating to other cultures. Information about books and authors can be stored in databases like online general-interest book databases. Metadata, which means "data about data" is information about a book. Metadata about a book may include its title, ISBN or other classification number (see above), the names of contributors (author, editor, illustrator) and publisher, its date and size, the language of the text, its subject matter, etc.


title: Book

text: Once the book is published, it is put on the market by distributors and bookstores. Meanwhile, its promotion comes from various media reports. Book marketing is governed by the law in many states.


title: Book

text: In recent years, the book had a second life in the form of reading aloud. This is called public readings of published works, with the assistance of professional readers (often known actors) and in close collaboration with writers, publishers, booksellers, librarians, leaders of the literary world and artists.


title: Book

text: Many individual or collective practices exist to increase the number of readers of a book. Among them:


title: Book

text: This form of the book chain has hardly changed since the eighteenth century, and has not always been this way. Thus, the author has asserted gradually with time, and the copyright dates only from the nineteenth century. For many centuries, especially before the invention of printing, each freely copied out books that passed through his hands, adding if desired his own comments. Similarly, bookseller and publisher jobs have emerged with the invention of printing, which made the book an industrial product, requiring structures of production and marketing.


title: Book

text: The invention of the Internet, e-readers, tablets, and projects like Wikipedia and Gutenberg, are likely to change the book industry for years to come.


title: Book

text: Paper was first made in China as early as 200 BC, and reached Europe through Muslim territories. At first made of rags, the industrial revolution changed paper-making practices, allowing for paper to be made out of wood pulp. Papermaking in Europe began in the 11th century, although vellum was also common there as page material up until the beginning of the 16th century, vellum being the more expensive and durable option. Printers or publishers would often issue the same publication on both materials, to cater to more than one market.


title: Book

text: Paper made from wood pulp became popular in the early 20th century, because it was cheaper than linen or abaca cloth-based papers. Pulp-based paper made books less expensive to the general public. This paved the way for huge leaps in the rate of literacy in industrialised nations, and enabled the spread of information during the Second Industrial Revolution.


title: Book

text: Pulp paper, however, contains acid which eventually destroys the paper from within. Earlier techniques for making paper used limestone rollers, which neutralized the acid in the pulp. Books printed between 1850 and 1950 are primarily at risk; more recent books are often printed on acid-free or alkaline paper. Libraries today have to consider mass deacidification of their older collections in order to prevent decay.


title: Book

text: Stability of the climate is critical to the long-term preservation of paper and book material. Good air circulation is important to keep fluctuation in climate stable. The HVAC system should be up to date and functioning efficiently. Light is detrimental to collections. Therefore, care should be given to the collections by implementing light control. General housekeeping issues can be addressed, including pest control. In addition to these helpful solutions, a library must also make an effort to be prepared if a disaster occurs, one that they cannot control. Time and effort should be given to create a concise and effective disaster plan to counteract any damage incurred through "acts of God", therefore an emergency management plan should be in place.


title: United Russia

text: United Russia () is a Russian conservative political party. As the largest party in Russia, it holds 325 (or 72.22%) of the 450 seats in the State Duma , having constituted the majority in the chamber since 2007. The party was formed in December 2001 through a merger of Unity, Fatherland – All Russia and the Agrarian Party of Russia.


title: United Russia

text: United Russia supports the policies of incumbent president Vladimir Putin, who previously served as party leader during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev; despite not currently being the official leader or a member of the party, Putin operates as its "de facto" leader. The party peaked in the 2007 Russian legislative election with 64.3% of the vote, while in recent years it has seen its popularity decline. The party's ideology has been inconsistent but embraces specific politicians and officials, who hold a variety of political views, who support Putin. The party appeals mainly to pro-Putin and non-ideological voters, and is often classified by political scientists as a "big-tent party", or as a "party of power". In 2009, it proclaimed Russian conservatism as its official ideology.


title: United Russia

text: United Russia's predecessor was the Unity bloc, which was created three months before the December 1999 Duma elections to counter the advance of the Fatherland – All Russia (OVR) party led by Yuri Luzhkov. The creation of the party was heavily supported by Kremlin insiders, who were wary of what looked like a certain OVR victory. They did not expect Unity to have much chance of success since President Boris Yeltsin was very unpopular and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ratings were still minuscule. The new party attempted to mimic OVR's formula of success, placing an emphasis on competence and pragmatism. Charismatic Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu was appointed as the party leader.


title: United Russia

text: In 1999, Prime Minister Putin's support increased to double-digit figures after he sent troops into Chechnya in retaliation for bombings in Moscow and other cities attributed to Chechen terrorists and in response to the Chechen invasion of Dagestan. Putin's war effort was hugely popular and portrayed positively by the Boris Berezovsky-owned Public Russian Television (ORT) as well as by state-controlled RTR.


title: United Russia

text: Contrary to its founders' expectations, Unity's election campaign in the 1999 election was a success with the party receiving 23.3% of the votes, considerably more than OVR's 13.3% and within one percentage point of the Communist Party's 24.3%. The popularity of the prime minister proved decisive for Unity's victory. The election results also made clear that Putin was going to win the 2000 presidential election, which resulted in competitors Luzhkov and Yevgeni Primakov dropping out. Yeltsin also gave Putin a boost by resigning as president on 31 December 1999.


title: United Russia

text: While Unity initially possessed one narrow purpose, limited only to the 1999 Duma elections, after the results state officials began to transform the party into a permanent one. A large number of independent deputies who had been elected to the Duma were invited to join the party's delegation. Many OVR deputies joined, including its leader Luzhkov. In April 2001, OVR and Unity leaders issued a joint declaration that they had started the process of unification. In July 2001, the unified party, called Union of Unity and Fatherland, held its founding congress and in December 2001 it became All-Russian Party of Unity and Fatherland, or more commonly, United Russia.


title: United Russia

text: Instead of the "communism versus capitalism" dichotomy that had dominated the political discourse in the 1990s, in the 1999–2000 electoral cycle Putin started to emphasize another reason to vote for his party: stability, which was yearned for by Russian citizens after a decade of chaotic change. With the exception of the continued fighting in the Northern Caucasus, Putin was perceived to have delivered it.


title: United Russia

text: On 13 January 2003, United Russia had 257,000 members—behind Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (600,000) and the Communists (500,000).


title: United Russia

text: In the second party congress in March 2003, Sergei Shoigu stood down and Boris Gryzlov was elected as the new party leader.


title: United Russia

text: Throughout Putin's first years as president, the country's economy improved considerably, growing more each year than in all of the previous decade and Putin's approval ratings hovered well above 70%. Russia's economic recovery was helped by high prices for its primary exports such as oil, gas and raw materials.


title: United Russia

text: The passage rate of law proposals increased considerably after United Russia became the dominant party in the Duma. In 1996–1999, only 76% of the legislation that passed the third reading was signed by the President while in 1999–2003 the ratio was 93%. While Yeltsin had often relied on his decree powers to enact major decisions, Putin almost never had to. United Russia's dominance in the Duma enabled Putin to push through a wide range of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, an overhaul of the labour market, breakups of national monopolies and new land and legal codes. United Russia characterised itself as wholly supportive of Putin's agenda, which proved a recipe for success and resulted in the party gaining a victory in the 2003 Duma elections, receiving more than a third of the popular vote.


title: United Russia

text: Throughout its history, United Russia has been successful in using administrative resources to weaken its opponents. For example, state-controlled news media portrayed the Communist Party as hypocritical for accepting money from several "dollar millionaires" during the 2003 Duma election campaign.


title: United Russia

text: Opposition parties also made several strategic mistakes. For example, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces seemed to spend more effort attacking each other than Putin, which made it easier for United Russia to win over liberal voters on the strength of market reforms under Putin. The opposition parties faltered in the 2003 elections, with the Communists gaining just 52 seats, a drop from 113 in 1999. Liberal opponents fared even worse, with Yabloko and Union of the Right Forces failing to cross the 5 percent threshold.


title: United Russia

text: As the economy continued to improve, Putin moved to rein in the unpopular oligarchs, Putin's approval ratings stayed high and he won the 2004 presidential election with over 71% of the votes. The 2007 Duma elections saw United Russia gain 64.3% of the votes. The Communist Party became a distant second with 11.57% of the votes. Putin was the only name on United Russia's national list. United Russia also introduced tougher party, candidate and voter registration requirements and increased the election threshold from 5% to 7% for the 2007 elections.


title: United Russia

text: During the December 2007 election, the party was accused by voters and election monitoring group Golos of numerous election law violations banned in the Russian Constitution.


title: United Russia

text: The legislative agenda shifted somewhat after the 2007 elections. Anti-terrorism legislation, large increases in social spending and the creation of new state corporations became the dominant issues while less energy was devoted to economic reform.


title: United Russia

text: For the 2008 presidential election, United Russia nominated Dmitry Medvedev to succeed Putin. Medvedev received Putin's blessing and scored a clear victory, receiving 71% of the votes. As President, Medvedev nominated Putin as his Prime Minister. On 15 April of the same year, Putin accepted a nomination to become the party's leader, but declared that this did not mean he would become a member. Medvedev also refused to become a member.


title: United Russia

text: During regional elections of 11 October 2009, United Russia won a majority of seats in almost every Russian municipality. Opposition candidates stated they were hindered from campaigning for the elections and some were denied places on the ballot. There were allegations of widespread ballot stuffing and voter intimidation as well as statistical analysis results supporting these accusations.


title: United Russia

text: Support for United Russia was 53% in a poll held in October 2009. In 2010–2011 and following the economic crisis, support for United Russia was variable, but declined overall. The share of the population voting for the party reached its lowest point in January 2011 (35%) before recovering to 41% in March 2011.


title: United Russia

text: The Agrarian Party supported the candidacy of Dmitry Medvedev in the 2008 presidential election and it merged into United Russia.


title: United Russia

text: At the party's XII Congress held on 24 September 2011, Medvedev supported the candidacy of Prime Minister Putin in the presidential election of 2012—a move that effectively assured Putin would return to the presidency, given the party's near-total dominance of Russian politics. Medvedev accepted the invitation of Prime Minister Putin to head the party in the State Duma elections and said that in his opinion Putin should run for President in 2012. Delegates applauded this statement standing and they unanimously supported his candidacy for President. Medvedev responded immediately, saying that applause is proof of Putin's popularity among the people. Ten thousand participants of the meeting listened to Medvedev's speech. In total, the congress was attended by about 12,000 participants, guests and journalists.


title: United Russia

text: At the same congress, the election list of candidates from the party in the December elections to the State Duma was approved. The list includes 416 party members and 183 non-partisan, 363 of them for the first time participate in the elections. On 29 September, the list was handed over to the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation. The party-list was led by President Medvedev. 582 delegates of the Congress voted in support of the list, against one.


title: United Russia

text: The election program of United Russia was announced during speeches of Medvedev and Putin. Medvedev has identified seven strategic priorities of government policy and Putin offered to cancel the erroneous tax debts of 36 million Russians in the amount of 30 billion rubles and increase from 10 October salaries of public sector employees by 6.5%. Putin also said that taxes for the wealthy citizens should be higher than for the middle class and offered to raise utility tariffs only excess baggage. Among other priorities, Putin called a complete re army and navy in 5–10 years, doubling the pace of road construction for 10 years, the creation or update of 25 million jobs in 20 years in and out of Russia in the five largest economies in the world.


title: United Russia

text: At the party's XIII Congress, held on 26 May 2012, Medvedev was elected chairman of United Russia. United Russia decided not use portraits of Medvedev and Putin during the fall election campaign.


title: United Russia

text: In March 2013, about 50 members of the United Russia from Abansky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai announced their withdrawal from the party. They sent an open letter (said to have been signed by 60 people) to the party chairman Medvedev, which criticized the activities of the party which according to them has ceased to fulfil its political function.


title: United Russia

text: In the 2021 Duma elections, the party retained its supermajority in the State Duma, despite polls before the election indicating historic low levels of support for the party at around 30%, leading to widespread allegations of electoral fraud in favour of United Russia.


title: United Russia

text: United Russia currently holds 340 of the 450 seats in the State Duma. It heads all five of the Duma's commissions and holds 14 of the 26 committee chairmanships and 10 of the 16 seats in the Council of Duma, the Duma's steering committee. The speaker of the Duma is United Russia's Vyacheslav Volodin.


title: United Russia

text: The party has only informal influence in the upper house, the Federation Council, as the Council has rejected the use of political factions in decision making.


title: United Russia

text: In 2013, United Russia claimed a membership of 2 million. According to a study conducted by Timothy J. Colton, Henry E. Hale and Michael McFaul after the March 2008 presidential elections, 30% of the Russian population are loyalists of the party.


title: United Russia

text: According to the party's 2003 political manifesto, "The Path of National Success", the party's goal is to unite the responsible political forces of the country, aiming to minimize the differences between rich and poor, young and old, state, business and society. The economy should combine state regulation and market freedoms, with the benefits of further growth distributed for the most part to the less fortunate. The party rejects left-wing and right-wing ideologies in favour of "political centrism" that could unite all sections of society. In addition, the official party platform emphasizes pragmatism and anti-radicalism. The party regards itself to be one of the heirs to Russia's tradition of statehood, both tsarist and Soviet eras. United Russia's long-time moniker is "the party of real deeds".


title: United Russia

text: Since 2006, when Vladislav Surkov introduced the term sovereign democracy, many figureheads of the party have taken usage of the term. Former President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has criticised the term. United Russia voted against the Council of Europe resolution 1481 (Need for international condemnation of crimes of communist governments).


title: United Russia

text: The party has promoted explicitly conservative policies in social, cultural and political matters, both at home and abroad. Putin has attacked globalism and economic liberalism as well as scientific and technological progress. Putin has promoted new think tanks that bring together like-minded intellectuals and writers. For example, the Izborsky Club, founded in 2012 by Aleksandr Prokhanov, stresses Russian nationalism, the restoration of Russia's historical greatness and systematic opposition to liberal ideas and policies. Vladislav Surkov, a senior government official, has been one of the key ideologists during Putin's presidency.


title: United Russia

text: In cultural and social affairs, United Russia has collaborated closely with the Russian Orthodox Church. Mark Woods provides specific examples of how the Church under Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has backed the expansion of Russian power into Crimea and eastern Ukraine. More broadly, "The New York Times" reported in September 2016 how that Church's policy prescriptions support the Kremlin's appeal to social conservatives:


title: United Russia

text: A fervent foe of homosexuality and any attempt to put individual rights above those of family, community or nation, the Russian Orthodox Church helps project Russia as the natural ally of all those who pine for a more secure, illiberal world free from the tradition-crushing rush of globalization, multiculturalism and women’s and gay rights.


title: United Russia

text: According to studies, United Russia voters in 2006 were younger and more market-oriented than the average voter. The party's electorate includes a substantial share of state employees, pensioners and military personnel who are dependent on the state for their livelihood. Sixty-four percent of United Russia supporters are female. In the run-up to the 2011 Duma elections, it was reported that support for United Russia was growing among young people.


title: United Russia

text: Foreign media and observers describe United Russia as a pure "presidential party", with the main goal of securing the power of the Russian President in the Russian parliament. The vast majority of officeholders in Russia are members of the party, hence it is sometimes described as a "public official party" or "administration party". Due to this, it is also often labelled the "Party of Power".


title: United Russia

text: United Russia has signed cooperation agreements with the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria, the Cambodian People's Party, the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, and the italian League for Salvini Premier. Its youth wing, the Young Guard of United Russia, has an alliance with the youth wing of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany, Young Alternative for Germany. The party has also signed cooperation agreements with the Serb nationalist Alliance of Independent Social Democrats of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Estonian Centre Party (though party leader Jüri Ratas recently claimed that the agreement has not been active for ten years and that there is no current cooperation between the parties). The party has proposed a cooperation agreement to the populist Five Star Movement (M5S). The Five Star Movement never gave a proper answer to the proposal and it is currently unknown whether it actually accepted the proposal or not.


title: United Russia

text: United Russia has also signed cooperation agreements with Kazakhstan's Nur Otan party, The Serbian Progressive Party, the Mongolian People's Party, the Uzbekistan Liberal Democratic Party, the People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan, the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova, the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, the Communist Party of Vietnam, South Africa's African National Congress, the New Azerbaijan Party, the Prosperous Armenia party, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region, the Workers' Party of Korea, the Communist Party of Cuba, and the Philippines' PDP–Laban party. The party used to have an agreement with the Latvian Social Democratic Party "Harmony", but the agreement lapsed in 2016 and was not renewed.


title: United Russia

text: Until 2014, United Russia was in the European Democrat Group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe alongside the British Conservative Party, Polish Law and Justice and Turkish Justice and Development Party.


title: United Russia

text: In April 2008, United Russia amended Section 7 of its charter, changing its heading from Party Chairman to Chairman of the Party and Chairman of the Party's Supreme Council. Under the amendments, United Russia may introduce a supreme elective post in the party, the post of the party's chairman, at the suggestion of Supreme Council and its chairman.


title: United Russia

text: The Supreme Council, led by the Supreme Council chairman, defines the strategy for the development of the party.


title: United Russia

text: The General Council has 152 members, is the foremost party platform in between party congresses and issues statements on important social or political questions. The Presidium of the General Council is led by a secretary, consists of 23 members and leads the political activity of the party, for instance election campaigns or other programmatic publications.


title: United Russia

text: United Russia introduced a local chapter system that mimicked the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) organization as a strong foundation for the one-party dominant system in the early 2000s. United Russia eagerly interviewed the LDP mission and studied their party structure. The number of party members was steadily increased by the introduction of the system.


title: United Russia

text: United Russia runs local and regional offices in all parts of the Russian Federation and also operates a foreign liaison office in Israel through a deal with the Kadima party.


title: United Russia

text: The party has 4 internal groupings, organized around common policy interests. In addition, the party makes use of four internal political clubs to debate policy: liberal conservative 4 November Club, social conservative Centre for Social Conservative Politics, conservative liberal State Patriotic Club and liberal Liberal Club. Based on this division, the party considered entering the 2007 Duma elections as three separate "columns" (liberal, conservative and social), but the idea was subsequently abandoned.


title: United Russia

text: United Russia has come in for criticism that it is "the party of crooks and thieves" (партия жуликов и воров, a term coined by activist Alexey Navalny) due to the continuing prevalence of corruption in Russia. In October 2011, "Novaya Gazeta" published an article describing how members of the public were writing the slogan on banknotes in protest. In December 2011, Putin rejected the accusation of corruption, saying that it was a general problem that was not restricted to one particular party: "They say that the ruling party is associated with theft, with corruption, but it's a cliché related not to a certain political force, it's a cliché related to power. ... What's important, however, is how the ruling government is fighting these negative things". A poll taken in November 2011 found that more than one-third of Russians agreed with the characterisation of United Russia as "the party of crooks and thieves". After the 2011 legislative elections, a few leaders within United Russia called for investigations of fraud and reform of the party.


title: United Russia

text: The party has also been criticised for the lack of a real program. Russian political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky stated in 2011: "We see chaos, where no one is sure of anything: the ruling party six months before the elections does not know what its program is and whose interests it should represent". The Russian news site "Gazeta.Ru" published an article in October 2011 stating that the authorities failed to come up with a program for the elections. CPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov in an interview with "Novaya Gazeta" in November 2011 stated: "At the United Russia congress, there was neither a serious analysis, nor a program for the near future, nor any interesting decisions, nor an honest assessment of what is happening in the world and in our country. And absolutely no real proposals for the next six years of government."


title: United Russia

text: United Russia's support for the raising of the retirement age in 2018 led to the party's ratings to fall to its lowest level since 2011. Mass protests against the measure were also held. The pension reform also led to a negative impact on the party's performance in regional elections later in the year.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Firefly is an American space Western drama television series, created by writer and director Joss Whedon, under his Mutant Enemy Productions label. Whedon served as an executive producer, along with Tim Minear. The series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of "Serenity", a ""Firefly"-class" spaceship. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on "Serenity". Whedon pitched the show as "nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The show explores the lives of a group of people, some of whom fought on the losing side of a civil war, who make a living on the fringes of society as part of the pioneer culture of their star system. In this future, the only two surviving superpowers, the United States and China, fused to form the central federal government, called the Alliance, resulting in the fusion of the two cultures. According to Whedon's vision, "nothing will change in the future: technology will advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: "Firefly" premiered in the U.S. on the Fox network on September 20, 2002. By mid-December, "Firefly" had averaged 4.7 million viewers per episode and was 98th in Nielsen ratings. It was canceled after 11 of the 14 produced episodes were aired. Despite the relatively short life span of the series, it received strong sales when it was released on DVD and has large fan support campaigns. It won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2003 for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series. "TV Guide" ranked the series at No. 5 on their 2013 list of 60 shows that were "Cancelled Too Soon".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The post-airing success of the show led Whedon and Universal Pictures to produce "Serenity", a 2005 film which continues the story from the series. The "Firefly" franchise expanded into other media, including comics and a role-playing game.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The series takes place in the year 2517, on a variety of planets and moons. The TV series does not reveal whether these celestial bodies are within one star system, only saying that "Serenity"s mode of propulsion is a "gravity-drive". Re-runs start with Book or Captain Reynolds providing the backstory. Book's narration runs as follows:


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The film "Serenity" makes clear that the planets and moons are in an extensive system, and production documents related to the film indicate that there is no faster-than-light travel in this universe. The characters occasionally refer to "Earth-that-was", and the film establishes that long before the events in the series, a large population had emigrated from Earth to a new star system in generation ships: "Earth-that-was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many." The emigrants established themselves in this new star system, with "dozens of planets and hundreds of moons", and many of these were terraformed, a process that was only the first step in making a planet habitable. The outlying settlements often did not receive any further support in the construction of their civilizations. This resulted in many border planets and moons having forbidding, dry environments, well-suited to the Western genre.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The show takes its name from the ""Firefly"-class" spaceship "Serenity" that the central characters call home. It resembles a firefly in general arrangement and the tail section, analogous to a bioluminescent insectoid abdomen, lights up during acceleration. The ship was named after the Battle of Serenity Valley, where Sergeant Malcolm Reynolds and Corporal Zoe Alleyne were among the survivors on the losing side. It is revealed in "Bushwhacked" that the Battle of Serenity Valley is widely considered to have sealed the Independents' fate.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The Alliance is shown to govern the star system through an organization of "core" planets, following its success in forcibly unifying all the colonies under one government. DVD commentary suggests that the Alliance is composed of two primary "core" systems, one predominantly Western, the other pan-Asian, justifying the mixed linguistic and visual themes of the series. The central planets are firmly under Alliance control, but the outlying planets and moons resemble the American Old West, under little governmental authority. Settlers and refugees on the outlying worlds have relative freedom from the central government but lack the amenities of the high-tech civilization that exists on the inner worlds. The outlying areas of space ("the black") are inhabited by the Reavers, a cannibalistic group of nomadic humans.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The captain of "Serenity" is Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds (Nathan Fillion). The episode "Serenity" establishes that the captain and his first mate Zoe Washburne, née Alleyne (Gina Torres) are veteran "Browncoats" of the Unification War, a failed attempt by the outlying worlds to resist the Alliance. A later episode, "Out of Gas", reveals that Mal bought the spaceship "Serenity" to live beyond Alliance control. Much of the crew's work consists of cargo runs or smuggling. The main story is that of River Tam (Summer Glau) and her brother Simon (Sean Maher). River is a child prodigy whose brain was subjected to Alliance scientists at a secret government institution; she displays symptoms of schizophrenia and often hears voices. It is later revealed that she is a "reader", one who possesses telepathic abilities. Simon gave up a career as an eminent trauma surgeon in an Alliance hospital to rescue her, and they are fugitives. In the original pilot, "Serenity", Simon joins the crew as a paying passenger with River smuggled on board as cargo. As Whedon states in an episode of a DVD commentary, every show he does is about creating a family. By the last episode, "Objects in Space", the fractured character of River has finally become whole, partly because the others decided to accept her into their "family" on the ship.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The show blends elements from the space opera and Western genres, depicting humanity's future in a manner different from most contemporary science fiction programs in that there are no large space battles. "Firefly" takes place in a multi-social future, primarily a fusion of Western and East Asian societies, where there is gross class inequality. As a result of the Sino-American Alliance, Mandarin Chinese is a common second language; it is used in advertisements, and characters in the show frequently curse in Mandarin. According to the DVD commentary on the episode "Serenity", this was explained as the result of China and the United States being the two superpowers that expanded into space.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The show features slang not used in contemporary culture, such as adaptations of modern words or new words. "Shiny" is frequently used as the real world slang "cool", and "gorram" is used as a mild swear word. Written and spoken Chinese, as well as Old West dialect, are also employed. As one reviewer noted: "The dialogue tended to be a bizarre purée of wisecracks, old-timey Western-paperback patois, and snatches of Chinese."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Tim Minear and Joss Whedon pointed out two scenes that, they believed, articulated the show's mood exceptionally clearly. One scene is in the original pilot "Serenity" when Mal is eating with chopsticks, and a Western tin cup is by his plate; the other is in "The Train Job" pilot when Mal is thrown out of a holographic bar window. The DVD set's "making-of" documentary explains the distinctive frontispiece of the series (wherein "Serenity" soars over a herd of horses) as Whedon's attempt to capture "everything you need to understand about the series in five seconds."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: One of the struggles that Whedon had with Fox was the tone of the show, especially with the main character Malcolm Reynolds. Fox pressured Whedon to make Mal more "jolly", as they feared he was too dark in the original pilot, epitomized by the moment he suggests he might "space" Simon and River, throwing them out of the airlock. Fox was not happy that the show involved the "nobodies" who "get squished by policy" instead of the actual policymakers.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: "Firefly" maintained an ensemble cast that portrayed nine crew members and passengers of the ship, "Serenity". These characters fight criminals and schemers, Alliance security forces, the utterly psychotic and brutal Reavers, and the mysterious men with "hands of blue"—who are operatives of a secret agency which is part of the megacorporation referred to in the DVD commentary only as The Blue Sun Corporation. The crew is driven by the need to secure enough income to keep their ship operational, set against their need to keep a low profile to avoid their adversaries. Their situation is incredibly complicated by the divergent motivations of the individuals on board "Serenity", but the show's brief run hampered complex characterization.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: All nine of the main characters appeared in every episode, except "Ariel", from which Book is absent.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Despite the series' short run, several recurring characters emerged from the inhabitants of the "Firefly" universe:


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Whedon developed the concept for the show after reading "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara chronicling the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. He wanted to follow people who had fought on the losing side of a war, their experiences afterward as pioneers and immigrants on the outskirts of civilization, much like the post-American Civil War era of Reconstruction and the American Old West. He intended the show to be "a "Stagecoach" kind of drama with a lot of people trying to figure out their lives in a bleak pioneer environment". Whedon wanted to develop a show about the tactile nature of life, a show where existence was more physical and more difficult. Whedon also read a book about Jewish partisan fighters in World War II. Whedon wanted to create something for television that was more character-driven and gritty than most modern science fiction. Television science fiction, he felt, had become too pristine and rarefied. Whedon wanted to give the show a name that indicated movement and power and felt that "Firefly" had both. This powerful word's relatively insignificant meaning, Whedon felt, added to its allure. He eventually created a ship in the image of a firefly.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: During the pilot episode filming, Whedon was still arguing with Fox that the show should be displayed in widescreen format. Whedon filmed scenes with actors on the edge of both sides so that they could only be shown in widescreen. This led to a few scenes on the DVD (and later Blu-ray) where objects or setups that were not visible in the original 4:3 broadcasts were displayed—such as the scene in the pilot where Wash mimes controlling the ship with a non-existent yoke. The Fox executives rejected the pilot, who felt that it lacked action and that the captain was too "dour". They also disliked a scene in which the crew backed down to a crime boss since the scene implied the crew was "being nothing". Fox told Whedon on a Friday afternoon that he had to submit a new pilot script on Monday morning or the show would not be picked up. Whedon and Tim Minear closeted themselves for the weekend to write what became the new pilot, "The Train Job". At the direction of Fox, they added "larger than life" characters such as the henchman "Crow" and the "hands of blue" men, who also introduced an "X-Files"-type ending.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: For the new pilot, Fox made it clear that they would not air the episodes in widescreen. Whedon and company felt they had to "serve two masters" by filming widescreen for eventual DVD release but keeping objects in-frame so it could still work when aired in pan and scan full frame. To obtain an immersive and immediate feel, the episodes were filmed in a documentary style with hand-held cameras, giving them the look of "found footage", with deliberately mis-framed and out-of-focus subjects. As Whedon related: "don't be arch, don't be sweeping—be found, be rough and tumble and docu[mentary] and you-are-there". Computer-generated scenes mimicked the motion of a hand-held camera; the style was not used when shooting scenes that involved the central government, the Alliance. Tracking and steady cameras were used to show the sterility of this aspect of the "Firefly" universe. Another style employed was lens flares harking back to 1970s television. This style was so desired that the director of photography, David Boyd, sent back the cutting-edge lenses which reduced lens flare in exchange for cheaper ones. Unlike other science fiction shows which add sound to space scenes for dramatic effect, "Firefly" portrays space as silent, because sounds cannot be transmitted in the vacuum of space.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Production designer Carey Meyer built the ship "Serenity" in two parts (one for each level) as a complete set with ceilings and practical lighting installed as part of the set that the cameras could use along with moveable parts. The two-part set also allowed the second unit to shoot in one section while the actors and first unit worked undisturbed in the other. As Whedon recalled: "you could pull it away or move something huge so that you could get in and around everything. That meant the environment worked for us and there weren't a lot of adjustments that needed to be made". There were other benefits to this set design. One was that it allowed the viewers to feel they were really in a ship. For Whedon, the design of the ship was crucial in defining the known space for the viewer and that there were not "fourteen hundred decks and a holodeck and an all-you-can-eat buffet in the back." He wanted to convey that it was utilitarian and that it was "beat-up but lived-in. Ultimately, it was home." Each room represented a feeling or character, usually conveyed by the paint color. He explains that as you move from the back of the ship in the engine room, toward the front of the ship to the bridge, the colors and mood progress from extremely warm to cooler. Besides evoking a mood associated with the character who spends the most time in each area, the color scheme also alludes to the heat generated in the ship's tail. Whedon was also keen on using vertical space; having the crew quarters accessible by ladder was important. Another benefit of the set design was that it also allowed the actors to stay in the moment and interact, without having to stop after each shot and set up for the next. This helped contribute to the documentary style Whedon strove for.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The set had several influences, including the sliding doors and tiny cubicles reminiscent of Japanese hotels. Artist Larry Dixon has noted that the cargo bay walls are "reminiscent of interlaced, overlapping Asian designs, cleverly reminding us of the American-Chinese Alliance setting while artistically forming a patterned plane for background scale reference." Dixon has also remarked on how the set design contributed to the storytelling through the use of color, depth, and composition, lighting, as well as its use of diagonals and patterned shadows.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Their small budget was another reason to use the ship for much of the storytelling. When the characters did go off the ship, the worlds all had Earth atmosphere and coloring because they could not afford to design alien worlds. "I didn't want to go to Yucca Flats every other episode and transform it into Bizarro World by making the sky orange", recalled Whedon. As Meyer recalled: "I think in the end the feel was that we wound up using a lot of places or exteriors that just felt too Western and we didn't necessarily want to go that way; but at some point, it just became the lesser of two evils—what could we actually create in three days?"


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Greg Edmonson composed the musical score for the series. He stated that he wrote for the emotion of the moment. A reviewer averred that he also wrote for the characters, stating: "Edmonson has developed a specialized collection of musical symbolism for the series." To help illustrate the collection, the reviewer gave leitmotifs, or "signatures", various names, noting that "Serenity" recalls the theme of the show and is used when they return to the ship, or when they were meeting in secret; it was "the sound of their home". The slide guitar and fiddle used in this piece are portable instruments that fit the lifestyle of the crew: "the music they make calls up tunes played out in the open, by people who were hundreds of miles away yesterday. 'Serenity' conjures the nomadic lifestyle the crew leads and underlines the western aspect of the show." Another emotional signature was "Sad Violin" used at the end of the Battle of Serenity Valley but also to set up the joke when Mal tells Simon that Kaylee is dead in the episode "Serenity". The most memorable use of "Sad Violin" is at the end of "The Message", when the crew mourned the death of Tracey. This was also the last scene of the last episode the actors shot, and so this was seen by them and Edmonson, as "Firefly" farewell. To denote danger, "Peril" was used, which is "a low pulse, like a heartbeat, with deep chimes and low strings". The reviewer also noted character signatures. The criminal Niska has a signature: Eastern European or Middle Eastern melodies over a low drone. Simon and River's signature was a piano played sparsely with a violin in the background. This contrasts with the portable instruments of "Serenity": the piano is an instrument that cannot be easily moved and evokes the image of "the distant house and family they both long for." The signatures were mostly established in the first pilot, "Serenity", and helped enhance the narrative.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Whedon's use of music in his television shows has been regarded as "filmic", in that he has been argued to use it to remind viewers at "pivotal moments" of earlier events, resulting in a tighter continuity throughout the season.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The musical score expressed the social fusion depicted in the show. Cowboy guitar blended with Asian influence produced the atmospheric background for the series. As one reviewer stated:


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The show's theme song, "The Ballad of Serenity", was written by Joss Whedon and performed by Sonny Rhodes. Whedon wrote the song before the series was greenlit, and a preliminary recording performed by Whedon can be found on the DVD release. The soundtrack to the series was released on CD on November 8, 2005, by Varèse Sarabande. Fox Music released a 40-minute soundtrack in September 2005 as a digital EP. "The Ballad of Serenity" was used by NASA as the wake-up song for astronaut Robert L. Behnken and the other crewmembers of STS-130 on February 12, 2010.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: In casting his nine-member crew, Whedon looked first at the actors and considered their chemistry with others. Cast member Sean Maher recalls, "So then he just sort of put us all together, and I think it was very quick like right out of the gate, we all instantly bonded." All nine cast members were chosen before filming began; while making the original pilot "Serenity", Whedon decided that Rebecca Gayheart was unsuitable for the role of Inara Serra, and shot her scenes in singles so that it would be easier to replace her. Morena Baccarin auditioned for the role and two days later was on the set in her first television show. "Joss brought me down from the testing room like a proud dad, holding my hand and introducing me", Baccarin recalled.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Whedon approached Nathan Fillion to play the lead role of Malcolm Reynolds; after Whedon explained the premise and showed him the treatment for the pilot, Fillion was eager for the role. Fillion was called back several times to read for the part before he was cast. He noted that "it was really thrilling. It was my first lead, and I was pretty nervous, but I really wanted that part, and I wanted to tell those stories." Fillion later said he was "heartbroken" when he learned the series had been canceled. Fillion has called his time on "Firefly" the best acting job he ever had, and compares every job he has had to it.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Alan Tudyk applied through a casting office and several months later was called in for an audition, where he met with Whedon. He was called back to test with two candidates for the role of Zoe (Wash's wife) and was told that it was down to him and one other candidate. The Zoes he tested with were not selected (Gina Torres eventually received the role), and Tudyk was sent home but received a call informing him he had the part anyway. His audition tape is included in the special features of the DVD release.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Gina Torres, a veteran of several science fiction/fantasy works ("Cleopatra 2525", "The Matrix Reloaded", "Alias", ""), was at first uninterested in doing another science fiction show but "was won over by the quality of the source material". As she recalled, "you had these challenged characters inhabiting a challenging world, and that makes for great storytelling. And no aliens!"


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Canadian actress Jewel Staite videotaped her audition from Vancouver and was asked to come to Los Angeles to meet Whedon, at which point she was cast for the role of Kaylee Frye, the ship's engineer. She was asked to put on weight for the role.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Sean Maher recalls reading for the part and liking the character of Simon Tam, but that it was Whedon's personality and vision that "sealed the deal" for him. For the role of Simon's sister, River Tam, Whedon called in Summer Glau for an audition and test the same day. Glau had first worked for Whedon in the "Angel" episode "Waiting in the Wings". Two weeks later, Whedon called her to tell her she had the part.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Veteran television actor Ron Glass has said that until "Firefly", he had not experienced or sought a science-fiction or western role. Still, he fell in love with the pilot script and the character of Shepherd Book.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Whedon selected Tim Minear to be the show runner, who serves as the head writer and production leader. According to Whedon, "[Minear] understood the show as well as any human being, and just brought so much to it that I think of it as though he were always a part of it." Many of the other production staff were selected from people Whedon had worked with in the past, except the director of photography David Boyd, who was the "big find" and who was "full of joy and energy".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The writers were selected after interviews and script samplings. Among the writers were José Molina, Ben Edlund, Cheryl Cain, Brett Matthews, Drew Z. Greenberg and Jane Espenson. Espenson wrote an essay on the writing process with Mutant Enemy Productions. A meeting is held and an idea is floated, generally by Whedon, and the writers brainstorm to develop the central theme of the episode and the character development. Next, the writers (except the one working on the previous week's episode) meet in the anteroom to Whedon's office to begin 'breaking' the story into acts and scenes. One of the key components to devising acts for the team is deciding where to break for commercial and ensuring the viewer returns. "Finding these moments in the story help give it shape: think of them as tentpoles that support the structure." For instance, in "Shindig", the break for commercial occurs when Malcolm Reynolds is gravely injured and losing the duel. "It does not end when Mal turns the fight around when he stands victorious over his opponent. They're both big moments, but one of them leaves you curious, and the other doesn't."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Next, the writers develop the scenes onto a marker-filled whiteboard, featuring "a brief ordered description of each scene". A writer is selected to create an outline of the episode's concept—occasionally with some dialogue and jokes—in one day. The outline is given to showrunner Tim Minear, who revises it within a day. The writer uses the revised outline to write the first draft of the script while the other writers develop the next. This first draft is usually submitted for revision within three to fourteen days; afterward, a second and sometimes third draft is written. After all modifications are made, the final draft would be produced as the "shooting draft".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Jill Ohanneson, "Firefly"s original costume designer, brought on Shawna Trpcic as her assistant for the pilot. When the show was picked up, Ohanneson was involved in another job and declined "Firefly", suggesting Trpcic for the job.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The costumes were chiefly influenced by World War II, the American Civil War, the American Old West, and 1861 samurai Japan. Trpcic used deep reds and oranges for the main cast to express a feeling of "home" and contrasted that with grays and cool blues for the Alliance. Since the characters were often getting shot, Trpcic would make up to six versions of the same costume for multiple takes.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Since the cancellation of the series, various cast and crew members have revealed details they had planned for the show's future:


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: "Firefly" consists of a two-hour pilot and thirteen one-hour episodes (with commercials). The series originally premiered in the United States on Fox in September 2002. The episodes were aired out of the intended order. Although Whedon had designed the show to run for seven years, low ratings resulted in cancellation by Fox in December 2002 after only 11 of the 14 completed episodes had aired in the United States. The three episodes unaired by Fox eventually debuted in 2003 on the Sci Fi Channel in the United Kingdom. Prior to cancellation, some fans, worried about low ratings, formed the "Firefly" Immediate Assistance campaign whose goal was to support the production of the show by sending in postcards to Fox. After it was canceled, the campaign worked on getting another network such as UPN to pick up the series. The campaign was unsuccessful in securing the show's continuation.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: "The A.V. Club" cited several actions by the Fox network that contributed to the show's failure, most notably airing the episodes out of sequence, making the plot more difficult to follow. For instance, the double episode "Serenity" was intended as the premiere, and therefore contained most of the character introductions and back-story. Fox decided that "Serenity" was unsuitable for opening the series, and "The Train Job" was specifically created to act as a new pilot. In addition, "Firefly" was promoted as an action-comedy rather than the more serious character study it was intended to be, and the showbiz trade paper "Variety" noted Fox's decision to occasionally preempt the show for sporting events.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Fox remastered the complete series in 1080i high-definition for broadcast on Universal HD, which began in April 2008.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: On March 12, 2009, the series was the winner of the first annual Hulu awards in the category "Shows We'd Bring Back".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The Science Channel began airing the series on March 6, 2011. All episodes aired in the intended order, including episodes "Trash", "The Message" and "Heart of Gold", which were not aired in the original Fox series run. Along with each episode, Dr. Michio Kaku provided commentary about the real-life science behind the show's science fiction.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: A box set containing the 14 completed episodes (including those which had not yet aired in the United States) was released on region 1 DVD on December 9, 2003, region 2 on April 19, 2004, and region 4 on August 2, 2004. The box features the episodes in the original order in which the show's producers had intended them to be broadcast, as well as seven episode commentaries, outtakes and other features. The DVDs feature the episodes as they were shot in 16:9 widescreen, with anamorphic transfers and Dolby Surround audio. By September 2005, its DVD release had sold about 500,000 copies.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The series was re-released on Blu-ray Disc on November 11, 2008, comprising three discs; exclusive extras to the Blu-ray release include extra audio commentary from Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk and Ron Glass for the episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds", as well as an additional featurette, ""Firefly" Reunion: Lunch with Joss, Nathan, Alan and Ron". On September 19, 2017, the series was reissued on Blu-ray as a "15th Anniversary Collection". The set included new packaging that came with character cards and a fold-out map of the solar system in which the series is set.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 77% with an average score of 7.8 out of 10 based on 44 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Firefly" earns its audience's adoration with the help of Nathan Fillion's dry delivery, a detailed fantasy world, and compelling storylines – even if it doesn't stand with creator Joss Whedon's most consistent work." Metacritic collected 30 reviews and calculated an average score of 63 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Many reviews focused on the show's fusion of Wild West and outer space motifs. "TV Guide"s Matt Roush, for instance, called the show "oddball" and "offbeat" and noted how the series took the metaphor of space operas as Westerns. Roush opined that the shift from space travel to horseback was "jarring", but that once he got used to this, he found the characters cleverly conceived and the writing a crisp balance of action, tension, and humor. Several reviewers, criticized the show's setting; Tim Goodman of the "San Francisco Chronicle" felt that the melding of the western and science fiction genres was a "forced hodgepodge of two alarmingly opposite genres just for the sake of being different" and called the series a "vast disappointment", and Carina Chocano of Salon.com said that while the "space as Wild West" metaphor is fairly redundant, neither genre connected to the present. Emily Nussbaum of "The New York Times", reviewing the DVD set, noted that the program featured "an oddball genre mix that might have doomed it from the beginning: it was a character-rich sci-fi western comedy-drama with existential underpinnings, a hard sell during a season dominated by "Joe Millionaire"".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The "Boston Globe" described "Firefly" as a "wonderful, imaginative mess brimming with possibility". The review further notes the difference between the new series and other programs was that those shows "burst onto the scene with slick pilots and quickly deteriorate into mediocrity ... "Firefly" is on the opposite creative journey." Jason Snell called the show one of the best on television, and one "with the most potential for future brilliance".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Tim White, writing for "The Objective Standard", focused his review on the show's depiction of heroism. He concludes that ""Firefly" is not perfectly accurate in its attempts to depict the essential natures of heroism and villainy, but its successes are much more uplifting than its failures are problematic. It's also consistently funny, skillfully written, and passionately acted."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Reviewers also compared "Firefly" to Whedon's other series, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Chocano noted that the series lacks the psychological tension of "Buffy" and suggests that this might be attributable to the episodes being aired out of order. MSN, on the other hand, pointed out that after viewing the DVD boxed set, it was easy to see why the program had attracted many die-hard fans. "All of Whedon's fingerprints are there: the witty dialogue, the quirky premises and dark exploration of human fallacy that made "Buffy" brilliant found their way to this space drama".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Princess Weekes from "The Mary Sue" stated that she "really enjoyed" the series, but wrote that, "it lacks Chinese actors, so if it's going to be brought back, that's a really easy fix." Writing for Syfy, Alyssa Fikse described the show as a "problematic fave", calling the lack of Asian characters in the show "negligent at best, racist at worst".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: "Firefly" generated a loyal base of fans during its three-month original broadcast run on Fox in late 2002. These fans, self-styled Browncoats, used online forums to organize and try to save the series from being canceled by Fox only three months after its debut. Their efforts included raising money for an ad in "Variety" magazine and a postcard writing campaign to UPN. While unsuccessful in finding a network that would continue the show, their support led to a release of the series on DVD in December 2003. A subsequent fan campaign raised over $14,000 in donations to have a purchased "Firefly" DVD set placed aboard 250 U.S. Navy ships by April 2004 for recreational viewing by their crews.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: These and other continuing fan activities eventually persuaded Universal Studios to produce a feature film, "Serenity". (The title of "Serenity" was chosen, according to Whedon, because Fox still owned the rights to the name 'Firefly'). Numerous early screenings of rough film cuts were held for existing fans starting in May 2005 as an attempt to create a buzz to increase ticket sales when the final film cut was released widely on September 30, 2005. The film was not as commercially successful as fans had hoped, opening at number two and making only $40 million worldwide during its initial theatrical release.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: On June 23, 2006, fans organized the first worldwide charity screenings of "Serenity" in 47 cities, dubbed as Can't Stop the Serenity or CSTS, an homage to the movie's tagline, "Can't stop the signal". The event raised over $65,000 for Whedon's favorite charity, Equality Now. In 2007, $106,000 was raised; in 2008, $107,219; and in 2009, $137,331.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: In July 2006, a fan-made documentary was released, titled "Done the Impossible", and is commercially available. The documentary relates the story of the fans and how the show has affected them, and features interviews with Whedon and various cast members. Part of the DVD proceeds are donated to Equality Now.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: NASA Browncoat astronaut Steven Swanson took the "Firefly" and "Serenity" DVDs with him on Space Shuttle Atlantis's STS-117 mission in June 2007. The DVDs were added to the media collection on the International Space Station as entertainment for the station's crews.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: A fan-made, not-for-profit, unofficial sequel to "Serenity", titled "Browncoats: Redemption", premiered at Dragon*Con 2010 on September 4, 2010. According to the film's creator and producer, Whedon gave "his blessing" to the project. The film was sold on DVD and Blu-ray at the film's website, with all proceeds being distributed among five charities. The film was also screened at various science-fiction conventions across the United States, with admission receipts similarly being donated. All sales ended on September 1, 2011, one year after its premiere, with total revenues exceeding $115,000.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: In 2005, "New Scientist" magazine's website held an internet poll to find "The World's Best Space Sci-Fi Ever". "Firefly" came in first place, with its cinematic follow-up "Serenity" in second. In 2012, "Entertainment Weekly" listed the show at No. 11 in the "25 Best Cult TV Shows from the Past 25 Years", commenting, "as it often does, martyrdom has only enhanced its legend."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Brad Wright, co-creator of "Stargate SG-1" has said that the 200th episode of "SG-1" is "a little kiss to "Serenity" and "Firefly", which was possibly one of the best canceled series in history". In the episode, "Martin Lloyd has come to the S.G.C. [Stargate Command] because even though 'Wormhole X-Treme!' was canceled after three episodes, it did so well on DVD they're making a feature [film]".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The follow-up film, "Serenity", was voted the best science fiction movie of all time in an "SFX" magazine poll of 3,000 fans. "Firefly" was later ranked #25 on "TV Guide"s Top Cult Shows Ever. The name for the Google beta app Google Wave was inspired by this TV series.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: In an interview on February 17, 2011, with "Entertainment Weekly", Nathan Fillion joked that: "If I got $300 million from the California Lottery, the first thing I would do is buy the rights to "Firefly", make it on my own, and distribute it on the Internet". This quickly gave rise to a fan-run initiative to raising the funds to purchase the rights. On March 7, 2011, the organizers announced the closure of the project due to lack of endorsement from the creators, with $1 million pledged at the time it was shut down.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Joss Whedon, Tim Minear, and cast members Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Summer Glau, Adam Baldwin, and Sean Maher reunited at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con for a 10th-anniversary panel. Ten thousand people lined up to get into the panel, and the panel ended with the entire crowd giving the cast and crew a standing ovation.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: A tenth anniversary special, "Browncoats Unite", was shown on the Science Channel on November 11, 2012. The special featured Whedon, Minear, and several of the cast members, in a discussion on the series' history.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: According to "Reason"s Julian Sanchez, "Firefly"s cult following "seems to include a disproportionate number of libertarians". The story themes are often cautionary about too-powerful central authority and its capacity to do bad while being considered by the majority as good. The characters each exhibit traits that exemplify core libertarian values, such as the right to bear arms (Jayne, Zoe), legal prostitution (Inara), freedom of religion (Book), logic and reasoning (Simon), and anti-conscription (River). Joss Whedon notes this theme, saying "Mal is, if not a Republican, certainly a libertarian, he's certainly a less-government kinda guy. He's the opposite of me in many ways."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: "The Signal" is a "Firefly" and "Serenity"-focused podcast developed by fans of the Joss Whedon property. Hosted by Kari Haley and Les Howard, "The Signal" is a fan-driven podcast dedicated to Joss Whedon's short-lived TV series "Firefly" (2002) and its film "Serenity" (2005). Initially created as guerrilla marketing to promote "Serenity", the podcast features discussions about the franchise's role-playing game, fan fiction as audio dramas, and interviews (e.g. with PJ Haarsma, Jane Espenson, and Marc Gunn). Haley and Howard described the podcast's purpose as "[doing] whatever we can to see that more new "Firefly" is created in any format."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: In early 2006, Mur Lafferty described the show as "PG-rated", about an hour long, and publishing an episode every two weeks. That December, "The Signal" released a compilation album of filk music that had previously featured on the podcast: "Songs from the Black"; the album featured music by Luke Ski, Lich King, and Greg Edmonson.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: In 2006, "The Signal" received a People's Choice Podcast Award in the categories of "TV & Film" and "Best Produced"; it received the former again in 2008. "The Signal" was awarded the 2007 Parsec Award for "Best Fan Podcast", and in the category of "Best Speculative Fiction Fan or News Podcast (Specific)", it won the 2010 and 2012 Parsecs. Writing for Maximum Fun, Ian Brill praised "The Signal" as surprisingly professional with well-produced segments, though he unflatteringly compared Haley and Howard to Whedon's character Xander Harris: "They say mildly clever and cutesy things to each other and then sound tremendously satisfied with themselves while saying it."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: At the time the series was canceled by Fox, it averaged 4.7 million viewers and ranked 98th in Nielsen ratings.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The cancellation of "Firefly" is a running gag in the CBS sitcom, "The Big Bang Theory", which ran from 2007–2019. The character Sheldon Cooper is a fan of the show. When he and Leonard Hofstadter discuss their roommate agreement, they include a passage in which they dedicate Friday nights to watching "Firefly", as Sheldon believes it will last for years. Upon its cancellation, he brands Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox, a traitor. During the show's second season, in episode 17 ("The Terminator Decoupling"), Summer Glau appears as herself, encountering Sheldon, Leonard, and their friends on a train to San Francisco. When Raj tries to hit on her, he says that although he is an astrophysicist, she was actually in space during the shooting of "Firefly". Glau chides him for believing this, and Raj backtracks, saying, "Those are crazy people!" In season 8, episode 15, Raj and Leonard recognise Nathan Fillion in a café and insist on taking a selfie with him, though he denies being the Firefly star.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: On the NBC comedy "Community", the characters Troy and Abed are fans of the show. They have an agreement that if one of them dies, the other will stage it to look like a suicide caused by the cancellation of "Firefly", in the hopes that it will bring the show back.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: In the 2003 "Battlestar Galactica" miniseries/pilot, a ship resembling "Serenity" appears in the background of the scene with Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell). "Serenity" is one of several spaceships inserted as cameos into digital effects scenes by Zoic Studios, the company responsible for digital effects in both "Firefly" and "Battlestar Galactica".


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The webcomic "xkcd" commented on "Firefly"s conspicuous absence of Asian characters in the 2009 comic "Well". When a character drops a coin into "The Uncomfortable Truths Well", it responds, "For a universe that's supposed to be half Chinese, "Firefly" sure doesn't have any Asians."


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The television series "Castle", where Fillion plays the lead character Richard Castle, has made ongoing homages to "Firefly". Castle has props from "Firefly" as decorative items in his home, has dressed up as a "space cowboy" for Halloween ("You wore that five years ago", cracked his daughter), speaks Chinese that he learned from "a TV show [he] loved", and has made rapid "two-by-two" finger motions while wearing blue surgical gloves. He has been humorously asked if he has ever heard of a spa known as "Serenity", and "Firefly" catchphrases such as "shiny", "special hell", and "I was aiming for the head" have been used as punchlines during various dramatic scenes in "Castle". He has worked a murder case at a science fiction convention with suspects being the cast of a long-cancelled space opera that only ran for a season, and has had direct and incidental interaction with people portrayed by "Firefly" cast members.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: "Con Man", a 2015 comedy web series created by Tudyk and co-produced by Fillion, draws on the pair's experiences as cult science fiction actors touring the convention circuit. Though it is not autobiographical, the show's fictional "Spectrum" echoes "Firefly" and Tudyk's and Fillion's roles reflect their own "Firefly" roles. Staite, Torres, Glau, Maher, and Whedon made guest appearances. Maher played himself as a former "Firefly" actor.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: The popularity of the short-lived series served as the launching point for a media franchise within the "Firefly" universe, including the feature film "Serenity", which addresses many plot points left unresolved by the series' cancellation.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: Additionally, there are two comic-book mini-series, "" (3 issues, 104 pages, 2006), "" (3 issues, 80 pages, 2008) and a one-shot hardcover "Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale" (56 pages, 2010), along with the one-shots "Serenity: Downtime and The Other Half" and "Serenity: Float Out" in which Whedon explored plot strands he had intended to explore further in the series. The comics are set, in plot terms, between the end of the TV series and the opening of the feature film. The two mini-series were later published in collected form as hardcover and paperback graphic novels. A six-issue series titled "Serenity: Leaves on the Wind" began in January 2014 and the series takes place after the events of the film. A six-issue series titled "Serenity: No Power in the 'Verse" began in October 2016 and the series is set about 1.5 years after "Leaves on the Wind". In July 2018, Boom! Studios announced that they had acquired the comic book and graphic novel publishing license to "Firefly" with plans to release new monthly comic book series, limited series, original graphic novels, and more.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: In July 2014, the release of the video game "Firefly Online" was announced that planned to have the cast reprise their roles. Although never officially cancelled, there have been no updates about the game's release since March 2016.


title: Firefly (TV series)

text: In January 2018, Titan Books announced that they would begin publishing original canon "Firefly" novels. Seven books have so far been released.


title: Alexa Bliss

text: Alexis Cabrera (née Kaufman; born August 9, 1991) is an American professional wrestler. She is currently signed to WWE, where she performs on the Raw brand under the ring name Alexa Bliss. In 2013, Bliss signed a contract with WWE and was assigned to their Performance Center and developmental brand NXT. She made her main roster debut on the SmackDown brand in 2016, later becoming a two-time SmackDown Women's Champion and the first woman to hold the title twice.


title: Alexa Bliss

text: Bliss transferred to the Raw brand in 2017 and would go on to become a three-time Raw Women's Champion, with her initial reign making her the first woman to win both the Raw and SmackDown Women's titles. She and Nikki Cross are also the first two-time Women's Tag Team Champions in WWE history, making Bliss the second Women's Triple Crown Champion. In 2018, she won both the second women's Money in the Bank ladder match and first women's Elimination Chamber match. On the July 18, 2022, episode of "Raw", she captured the WWE 24/7 Championship.


title: Alexa Bliss

text: Alexis Kaufman was born on August 9, 1991, in Columbus, Ohio,<ref name="SmackDown01/03/17"></ref> to teenage parents who were still in high school at the time of her birth. She has been involved in sports since the age of five, competing in track, kickboxing, softball, and gymnastics. She was also a cheerleader at Hilliard Davidson High School and reached Division I status at the University of Akron, where she graduated with an M.A. in medical dietetics. She spent time in competitive fitness competitions, and has competed in the Arnold Classic. At the age of 15, she had a life-threatening eating disorder, but turning to fitness competitions helped her overcome it. With her parents' permission, she also received breast augmentation when she was 17 to help overcome her eating disorders by making her feel more feminine, as her breasts stayed small naturally when she finished puberty and helped contribute to her eating disorders.


title: Alexa Bliss

text: Having no prior wrestling training, Kaufman was signed by WWE in May 2013 and reported to WWE's developmental territory NXT. On July 24 episode of "NXT" (which was taped on June 20), she made her first televised appearance, congratulating the inaugural NXT Women's Champion Paige. In August, she was added to WWE.com's NXT roster page and assigned the ring name Alexa Bliss. She acted as an unnamed ring announcer for the November 20 episode of "NXT". Her first televised appearance on the main roster came at WrestleMania XXX on April 6, 2014, when she played a part in Triple H's entrance. She made her televised in-ring debut on May 8 episode of "NXT", playing a glitter fairy gimmick with her ring entrance set to the theme track "Bling Bling," competing in a tournament for the vacant NXT Women's Championship. She defeated former Divas Champion Alicia Fox in the first round, but lost to Charlotte in the semi-finals. On September 25 episode of "NXT", a new ring entrance theme track "Blissful" was debuted for the first time with her match against Bayley. After a failed Double-Knees attempt, Bliss lost to a Bayley-to-Belly Suplex.