quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: Yeah, I've often wondered about reaver "culture." Why don't they eat each other?
Are they addicted to the Pax? Or are they forever changed once exposed to it?
How do you make more reavers? Birth or "conversion"? And how would a reaver mother behave toward her child?
Enraged mobs only cooperate on a single purpose level. Running a spaceship requires a whole different mindset, even if it is poorly maintained.
How do we know (other than "Bushwhacked", of course, where we don't know for sure he was becoming an actual reaver) that more reavers are ever made? It's not like they've been around all that long. I think Jayne points out in Serenity that they appeared 10 years prior (like the bogeyman out of stories).
Honestly, the most glaring problem was the density of the junk field around Miranda. If we're to assume the thing completely surrounds the planet, the population density of reavers in the field would be extremely low, to the point of rediculousness. Maybe it can be related to the same effect of the crawling pace of ships passing each other in space (which just happen to come within 100 yards(?) or so of each other.
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I have a hard time believing that the mindless reavers could survive for ten years in an environment as delicate and unstable as a space ship.
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If I were to write fanfiction explaining the Reavers, I would have each Reaver ship intimately tied to a Reaver who is a telepath.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I have a hard time believing that the mindless reavers could survive for ten years in an environment as delicate and unstable as a space ship.
But why do they have to be mindless? Having your aggression go through the roof often leads to irrational actions, but MUST it be that way?
I admit however that the reaver culture has always bothered me alittle for the same reason you just stated.
I think if the writers had had more time they could have probable fleshed the reavers out to the point that we would have been OK with how they are.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: If I were to write fanfiction explaining the Reavers, I would have each Reaver ship intimately tied to a Reaver who is a telepath.
Sorry for the double post but that was the only way it could make sense to me as well. But perhaps the guy does not have to be reaver just a VERY strong telepath who also just happens to be a sociopath.
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Well, this is true, but they obviously have some organization. Highly agressive, yes, but they didn't just kill, etc. the people on the personnel transport. They gathered them up in the one place. They also left traps, and they've shown the ability to track.
I suppose we could argue all day about which bits are inconsistent with which other bits, but I figure it's not all that important.
*edit* - this was in response to mph
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The Reavers aren't that far off from Vikings, you know.
Ship appears out of the vast open sea from ships fashioned to look menacing, marauders pour into a hapless village and brutally attack the inhabitants and either rape or take away the women, etc. Stories of babies being thrown into the air and caught with spears, etc.
The Vikings had a reputation for savagery and brutality across the north of Europe for decades - yet they were also the best seafaring culture of that time.
Now, granted, the Reavers are far more vicious than the Vikings ever were and clearly aren't attacking to pillage. But who's to say that there isn't a culture behind the outward mystique?
I mean, there could be a pack mentality - show enough aggression, and other Reavers leave you alone. There could be a grudging, simmering anger aboard the ship - or they could take slaves to be engineers, until they too go mad or commit suicide.
There are all kinds of possibilities - and it's possible that, much like sharks, they don't often attack each other. Or, even more like sharks, that they are more calm until they work themselves into a frenzy. (Also like stories of the berserkr Vikings).
Just random thoughts.
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I think the problem is that even if there is a satisfactory explanation for the Reavers (beyond a bad reaction to the Pax), it's never presented in the series or the movie. Everything else is just speculation. And the movie doesn't entirely jibe with the series.
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quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: I think the problem is that even if there is a satisfactory explanation for the Reavers (beyond a bad reaction to the Pax), it's never presented in the series or the movie. Everything else is just speculation. And the movie doesn't entirely jibe with the series.
Again Firefly did not even get a full season of episodes and the movie was constructed as a sort of farewell to the whole awesome idea.
Anything that makes Fox look bad and the writers of Firefly good is OK in my book.
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I'm well aware that Firefly lasted for less than half a season. That doesn't change what I said.
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quote:Originally posted by Juxtapose: You'd think telepathic Reavers would've caught on to Serenity's little ruse in the movie.
No no a telepathic reaver who controls the rest. That means they all recieve orders but they only have access to the thoughts of whoever is in charge. But yes if the head reaver was somewhere in the proximity of Serenity the ruse would not have worked.
But this is all speculation on a possible explanation that has no evidence.
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As long as we're speculating, I'll do my own little fan-fiction:
The reavers aren't merely people who happened to have a bad reaction to the pax.
The pax is addictive, but most people weren't even aware it was being used on them. At the constant levels administered through the air processors, the result is total apathy and death. The reavers are people who discovered the source of the pax, and began using it intentionally, in high doses. Anyone can become a reaver given the opportunity to self administer the pax in this way. When they hit a certain limit, they go berzerk and act the way we see them in rape and cannibal mode. Once sated, they kind of go dormant, acting the way most people did when exposed to the pax, in this state they are incapable of anything, including administering pax to continue the apathy. Except that the pax wears off before they die, putting them into withdrawal. Then they begin readministering the drug, and the cycle begins all over again.
There are in-between periods when the reavers are fairly normal, and can attend to regular issues of survival, including the production of new pax to satisfy their cravings. However, they suffer from agoraphobia, and never venture out to inhabited planets except when they are in the berzerk state. This is in part due to their appearance as a result of the damage they inflict on their own bodies.
Note: the reavers that took part in the attack on Mr. Universe's planet were only those who were near the berzerk state at the time Serenity fired into their midst. There are still a large number of them floating in the outer rim.
After the battle around Mr. Universe's planet, the Alliance discovered (for the first time) some surviving reavers in the dormant state, and took them in for study. It will take awhile before they discover the entire mechanism, but once they do, they will renew their experimentation with the pax on a new planet, in order to determine how the drug can be controlled.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Something to consider, by the way, sure they don't discuss FTL travel because they move around a single star system (which would STILL take a lot of time), but how the hell did they get from Earth to the new system they are currently in without a form of FTL? I guess it doesn't REALLY matter, but I'm curious.
This is explicitely explained in the prologue to "Serenity" (the movie)- after Earth-That-Was became too crowded, a number of colony ships were launched to the star system in which Firefly takes place, with the colonists in cryosleep, much like River was in "Serenity" (the episode). No need for FTL to travel between star systems when you can use sleeper ships instead.
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I don't remember them ever specifically saying cryosleep. And I'm still not entirely sure that would jive with the timeline presented. Or reality for that matter.
Firefly takes place what, 500 years after today? How far away is this system? The closest system to us is Alpha Centauri, which is almost 26 trillion miles away. But I have to imagine whatever system Firefly takes place in is much further, probably not one of the half dozen brightest stars in the sky, so it's probably even trillions of miles further away. After getting there, it would take decades to terraform and build a society. Even in cryo sleep, using the technology seen in Firefly, I don't buy it.
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quote:posted by Blackblade: No no a telepathic reaver who controls the rest. That means they all recieve orders but they only have access to the thoughts of whoever is in charge. But yes if the head reaver was somewhere in the proximity of Serenity the ruse would not have worked.
I was actually responding to Scott's post about a Reaver telepath tied to each ship.
The hive-mind-esqe idea, I think has some merit. Even the leader might not be able to sense beings outside the collective.
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I'm just gonna add my voice to those who have pointed out: just cause you're insanely enraged and have your inhibitions removed doesn't mean you're not intelligent and doesn't mean you can't cooperate with others. Some of the most brutal and terrifying serial killers of history were also some of the most intelligent and hardest to track down. And were able to play well with others when not killing.
The way I think of the reavers is not as mindless zombies, as most people seem to be inclined to, but closer to the viking thing. What makes sense to me is that for the part of the population that went reaver after pax exposure they were already borderline serial killer/cannibal. The pax simply removed inhibitions and increased aggression to the point where it came out. And probably some of the reavers did attack each other at first, but if they'd all done that they'd have wiped each other out. So I'd posit that the reavers inclined to attack other reavers were wiped out and some sort of order or society formed -- similar to vikings or other societies of raider barbarians. I'd guess they only go berserker when in battle, just like the berserkers of the past here on Earth. And they probably stick to Miranda when not raiding because they know the Alliance won't come after them there. Or hasn't yet anyway. It could be an intelligent conscious decision on their part.
The viking analogy seems to fit them better than the mindless zombie one to me.
Also for the whole conversion thing: it could be a mix of the whole Stockholm Syndrome thing and that they only choose people who are, like they were, borderline sociopath - just repressed. The treatment they give the person brings out the sociopath and they join in reaver society.
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quote:posted by Blackblade: No no a telepathic reaver who controls the rest. That means they all recieve orders but they only have access to the thoughts of whoever is in charge. But yes if the head reaver was somewhere in the proximity of Serenity the ruse would not have worked.
I was actually responding to Scott's post about a Reaver telepath tied to each ship.
The hive-mind-esqe idea, I think has some merit. Even the leader might not be able to sense beings outside the collective.
I would not like such an idea at all. The last thing I want in the Firefly universe are the Borg, or a Borg variant.
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quote:posted by Blackblade: No no a telepathic reaver who controls the rest. That means they all recieve orders but they only have access to the thoughts of whoever is in charge. But yes if the head reaver was somewhere in the proximity of Serenity the ruse would not have worked.
I was actually responding to Scott's post about a Reaver telepath tied to each ship.
The hive-mind-esqe idea, I think has some merit. Even the leader might not be able to sense beings outside the collective.
I would not like such an idea at all. The last thing I want in the Firefly universe are the Borg, or a Borg variant.
Exactly. I think it's more likely, or simply more believable, that they were like Vikings.
But that's the worst part of missing Firefly. We'll never know.
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I'm not sure I buy the "Viking" argument. I think it still demands a certain level of crazy to rape and skin people like that with wild abandon, and to mutilate your own body to that degree. It's unprecedented I think in world history to go to that extreme, and considering they used to be regular citizens of an advanced society, I think there's a lot more to it, and it doesn't quite jive. But then it doesn't necessarily have to. Sure it'd be awesome if it did, but like anything else in sci-fi, we can give a pass to a lot of minor things if the story is good on a broader level.
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If you wanna read it that way, I can see where you get it. But I'd be willing to bet a bunch that that's not how Joss Whedon intended it.
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The entire series is a purposeful juxtaposition/retake. It's a western, in space, and it recreates aspects of the frontier in whole. The Civil War, Gettysburg, the North and the South, the civilized East and the frontier West.
The reavers are the howling, scalping, raiding savages. They are even referred to literally as 'savages.' The representation is quite easily manifest.
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And yet, things in the show are definitely not a strict allegory, else Joss would have been left with no breathing room to create things (for instance) like the Companions.
Are you sure the Reavers are an allegory for the Native Americans? One could just as easily say they were the more extreme lawless elements of the Old West, especially considering they were originally immigrants who "went bad" somehow...not natives who were innately rotten from the start, as some old Western fiction once portrayed the natives.
I took them to be (like the Companions) to be something extra tossed in to remind is this isn't -just- "The Old West in Space!" Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Yes it's a western in space, it borrows elements from the old western genre. But that doesn't mean that it's supposed to represent those elements. Reavers are not supposed to represent the Native Americans. They are the roaming, raiding barbarians.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: The reavers sorta bugged me because of the connection the American frontier West that they were supposed to represent:
the 'savages.'
I wouldn't put it past Inara to call Mal a savage in a conversation, I think you are locking in on a connection that is not as intended as you think it is. Perhaps the reavers are a manifestation of the fears frontier folks of the real west had. Native Americans to them were boogeymen who could come for them at any time raping and pillaging and peeling their flesh from their bones (scalping).
Maybe the reavers are supposed to represent ideas not the actual people who lived there. Its obvious the actual settlers, traders, and explorers are FAR different from the actual people they are based off of.
I don't think Joss could have done a strict cross over of Native Americans into Firefly as there are no extra terrestrials who could be native to the planets that were terraformed, no alien remember? The reavers are not native to anywhere either they are immigrants just like everyone else.
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I can certainly see how Samp could make that jump though, it's not far fetched at all. To early American Western settlers, there's little difference, from the stereotype in stories that were told at the time, between what Reavers actually are and what they thought American Indians were. Of course it turned out that American Indians weren't like Reavers except in vague extremes, but that wasn't the image portrayed at first. They were viewed as bloody savages that killed for no reason and did horrible things to victims, sparing not even women and children.
I'd be surprised if Joss didn't at least take something like that into consideration when he created the Reavers, because the allusion is all too obvious.
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This is something Joss has said? This is definite?
Because that makes me want to reject the series, if he'd invoke such horrible prejudice and propaganda just because he needed good boogeymen for his little show.
I'm weird that way.
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quote:I don't think Joss could have done a strict cross over of Native Americans into Firefly as there are no extra terrestrials who could be native to the planets that were terraformed, no alien remember? The reavers are not native to anywhere either they are immigrants just like everyone else.
1. There is a significant amount of situational difference that makes it impossible for any 'strict cross-over' -- for instance, the original settlers did not abandon a blowing up, never-to-be-heard-from-again England That Was. New situations are created but are still intending to lead to a situational environment that turns this into a space western.
2. While I still maintain that the allusion is obvious, I understand the creative license. In this bizarro-West, it's the Confederates who are the goodguys and the Union that's dastardly and evil and controlling. It's no jump to say that the Indians have been turned into actually one-dimensional, irredeemable savages to create similar 'new' angles.
3. The Native Americans were 'immigrants' too, albeit ones that arrived tens of thousands of years before any paleface. You could have easily created natives who arrived in the same system by choice far before the Sino-Americans did. It's not impossible to allude to a sci-fi Bering Strait.
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Even if it were true and conscious, I don't agree with your moral conclusion, Puffy. If he's invoking the fictional cowboy stories of our youth, it wouldn't be bad writing to invoke the savages that those stories had . . . as they seemed to us back then. They can fulfill the same role in this narrative, but, because it's in space and not in the old west, they aren't like actual Indians, but instead like what we all once mistakenly thought Indians to be like. In speculative fiction, it seems entirely appropriate to speculate on what it would be like if the stereotypes had been true. I' not saying Whedon did this, but it would in no way be prejudiced or have any bearing on actual Native Americans.
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Whatever problems I might've had with the role of the Reavers were fixed when we learned how they came to be. I really don't think the metaphor works on any deep level.
quote:posted by Lyrhawn: The last thing I want in the Firefly universe are the Borg, or a Borg variant.
A good point.
I've always simply thought of the Reavers, aside from their obvious aggression, as just having an extreme in-group/out-group world view. They could even have a crude "morality" that they're operating under. That they have enough rationality left over to fly ships, keep them maintained, use weapons, and make coordinated attacks I don't actually find that troubling.
We call the Reaver's "crazy" because of the horrific acts they take, but that doesn't necessarily translate into "crazy" as meaning "unable to function."
We don't find fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter THAT unbelievable, or even real world horrors like Ted Bundy, who could, at different times, be charming or murderous and necrophilic.
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quote:At the urging of many of my most trusted nerdfriends, I sat down to watch a DVD of the cancelled Joss Whedon series firefly. Woah. That is some heavy-duty right-wing stuff there. As science fiction, I must admit that this series is really quite remarkable. There are a whole bunch of great hooks on offer: technology that is believably janky and used-looking, the persistence of sociology (ie people still behave like people), and beautiful, soundless and time-consuming space travel. The characters are all individually interesting, and the dialog, as would be expected, is clever and crisp. However, the entire framework of the show is a bizarre masculine-libertarian fantasy, even worse than the original Star Wars trilogy.
quote:Space is infested with wild savages, humans who have gone feral, cannibalizing, raping and pillaging the beleaguered pioneers. This means harrowing battles with wild injuns, complete with “tribal” drum music whenever they are approaching. For some reason, people in the firefly universe can travel near the speed of light, but still have to use old-fashioned bullet-shooting guns. This means cool shoot-outs and cool low-slinging holsters.
quote:And then there is the Indian thing. In order to complete the Old West picture, they had to have Indians. Because this is not a race thing (see previous posts on Touchy White People) they made the Indians insane people-eating pirates. Lest you forget that they are Indians, however there is the drum music and phrases like “they’ll chase after you if you try to run, that is their way.” Christ.
Umm... what? I think I'm just gonna let the post speak for itself in Jon Stewart style.
quote: Firefly's Reavers - those murderous and bloody space savages existing on the frontier of space (an allegory for the American West...) - play essentially the same role as American Indians once did in the Western movie genre. They are “the other” that is feared by civilization and gossiped about it; known and feared for their strange, savage ways. Had the series lasted, one wonders if the Reavers might have been portrayed in a less villainous, more three-dimensional light, given their obvious inspiration in Native American culture. Also, fair is fair, it must be stated that the Reavers in design and execution very closely resemble the Martians of John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars. Both races are self-mutilators, and both are berserkers.
quote:It is interesting to note where Firefly diverges from American history. Slavery is indeed brought up in episodes such as “Shindig,” and it is clear that Mal doesn’t favor much the arrangement. In this universe, the Alliance - i.e. the United State's Federal Government - is turly an exploitative, fascist state out to squash all personal freedoms. It’s a police state, not the “shiny” democracy America dreamed of becoming at the turn of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Of course, some social critics could cogently make the argument that the U.S. Government, with laws like “The Patriot Act,” is currently turning our country into an Alliance-like form of overreching government (and the series was produced post-September 11th...). So there's a lot to relate to here, but the references to our time and our history is not preachy or overdone.
I can deal a little more with that one's take on it. But I think I still disagree with some of it.
Note: both are blogs, both are just random people, neither got the idea from anyone who was remotely affiliated with making Firefly.
Personally I don't think the Reavers are meant to represent Native American's. If you must draw a parallel, it's like the guy in the second one said: they play the part of the same terrifying unknown or boogeyman that the indians played in old Wild West movies and shows. But that doesn't mean that the Reavers represent the Indians. They represent an idea, that the Indians were once used to represent.
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IIRC, Joss Whedon did specifically say that the Reavers were meant to initially evoke the "savage" stereotype of Native Americans in traditional westerns, but would, in allegorical fashion to reality, become more humanized as time passed, much as how "Buffy" introduced demons as the traditional fangy evil, and gradually humanized them as time passed. It was to be a commentary on how civilization tends to fear the outsider, whether or not the fear is actually justified. Unfortunately, the show was canceled before any fleshing out of the Reavers (no pun intended) could occur, and this aspect of the show's thematic underpinning was, by necessity, minimized in the movie. I suspect the victimization of Miranda's occupants would have been introduced far more slowly in "Firefly: Season 2," and we would have been placed in a position wherein we could empathize with them, even if they're still trying to eat our heroes' brains (think Spike with less chiseled jaw and more self-mutilation).
So, in summary: Reavers = Western civilization's conception of the foreign savage. Firefly = canceled before it could make good on this metaphor. Joss Whedon = not a racist.
Edit: I think the hoverbike.org blog writer is missing an essential point to remember when viewing ANY Joss Whedon show: what the protagonists think is not necessarily the same thing as what Joss Whedon thinks. Many of his characters, including and especially his heroes, have fundamental flaws and espouse viewpoints that he himself often disagrees with. For example, Whedon himself is very much a liberal Democrat in his political views, but Malcolm Reynolds is essentially a libertarian (he even says, at one point, "That's what governments are for: to get in a man's way").
Reading "Firefly" as a "masculine-libertarian" fantasy is to completely miss the point. When Mal treats Inara with disrespect, Whedon is pointing out that this sort of behavior is wrong, even if the hero is the one doing it. When Mal grouses about the Alliance, Whedon is saying, "This is a point of view that people have. Good people. They may be right, they may be wrong, hell, I might even think they're wrong, but they're all still human."
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I wonder if the Reavers would have been shown to take stimulants or hallucinogenics in order to induce a berserker-rage before battles.
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quote:yes if the head reaver was somewhere in the proximity of Serenity the ruse would not have worked.
I don't think that it was ever established within the Serenity universe that telepaths were "on" all the time.
Agreed about not making the Reavers into the Borg. But I *still* think giving the Reavers access to a telepath is a good means to explain how they can operate a starship, not kill eachother, and raid effectively, and still behave the way they do.
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I view the Reavers as something of a mob mentality, or a bunch of super-angry teenagers on really bad drugs. They have the ability to work towards a goal, even if the process if fueled by rage.
I've hit my thumb with a hammer while building something, and although I was really upset, I could still function. Imagine if everyone building a house were constantly hitting their thumbs. They might be able to complete the house, but it might also be really ugly, with no containment. And then they might skin and eat the neighbors after they finished.
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quote:yes if the head reaver was somewhere in the proximity of Serenity the ruse would not have worked.
I don't think that it was ever established within the Serenity universe that telepaths were "on" all the time.
Agreed about not making the Reavers into the Borg. But I *still* think giving the Reavers access to a telepath is a good means to explain how they can operate a starship, not kill eachother, and raid effectively, and still behave the way they do.
I personally did not like the hive mind idea either, but I agree it would help me make sense of the reavers.
I liked the Viking explanation. I like the idea of the Alliance hosting some secret op where the reavers are gassed with some chemical designed to surpress rage and it going south. The reavers then getleft with a mechanism for temporarily turning the rage off, but instead they choose to employ their rage for when they are in battle.
Or heck make it so that once or even several times a day they have to "vent" and they lock themselves in chambers until they tire themselves out raging. All sorts of cool story dynamics with such a mechanic.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Imagine if everyone building a house were constantly hitting their thumbs. They might be able to complete the house, but it might also be really ugly, with no containment. And then they might skin and eat the neighbors after they finished.
If only Hatrack had .sigs . . .
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D'you think the Pax could be transferred by extended physical contact and/or interchange of bodily fluids? Not sex necessarily, but blood or something. It would appear that the PAX had cleared the atmosphere of Miranda before Serenity showed up, because nobody aboard seemed to have problems... or is it because they weren't exposed to it for a long enough time?
Also what about a comparison of Reavers to Orcs or Uruk-Hai? That always seemed to be the closest to me. The strongest do impose their wills on the weaker in order to accomplish a goal, but the weak still have to be strong enough to survive... or they get eaten. (I don't think Sauron or any other uber-evil character can be equated to the earlier mentions of "hive minds" besides there were lots of orcs in the misty mountians with Bilbo in loose association with each other without a "greater evil" present to bind them to a larger strategic plan.
And I think the lack of a "larger strategic plan" with regards to the observed Reavers actions validates this point.
(sorry probably too many ideas jumbled together in this post)
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