firefly -- Zoe's background

So let's say that I was writing a Firefly story (well, a FF crossover, because I never write plain Firefly, and really, why would I when, between the western elements and the space show elements, it's just about the perfect crossover universe for anything that isn't set in a city, and even then you can kind of wing it if you try...) Right, let's try this again. Let's say I was writing a story about Zoe, and that a little while ago I happened on a piece of extended canon which implied that Zoe had been born and raised on a spaceship, and that I was pretty sure this wasn't something ever said on the show or the movie, and that I'm not 100% sure I'm going to use it as backstory here. BUT, all that said, let's say that I'm thinking about it.

The problem it raises for me is this -- if Zoe had grown up on spaceships, what kind of skills does she have to show for it? Wouldn't she pick up piloting, or engine work, or something related to the smooth running of a spaceship? And yet (correct me if I'm wrong), we never see her doing that kind of work. Is this just because she's the second-in-command, and if she had to, she could? Or is this a big continuity gap which I can either ignore or fill with whatever the heck I want to? Or should I just go with character-logic and stick to a background more like Mal's for her?

(To clarify -- I don't usually feel obliged to follow extended-canon, i.e. the stuff that comes up in commentaries and interviews and tie-in novels. I will if it's useful to me, though, and this is a potentially useful piece of background to me. It's just that right now it's causing me more problems than it's fixing.)

(no subject)

dotfic has a very interesting analysis of who initiates the hunts in each episode of Supernatural, and there's one interesting pattern -- actually, there are a couple interesting patterns, but one leaped out at me.

I'm pretty much just reproducing my comments on her entry ( under the cut )

In other news, I am writing what passes for a sex scene in my mostly-gen writing; I think it may be time to fade to black soon, before I embarrass myself. But yay for hot crossover pairings!