Surprise, surprise, more Rever questions. by Kaythryn

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Surprise, surprise, more Rever questions.

POSTED BY: KAYTHRYN
UPDATED: Saturday, August 23, 2003 08:19
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VIEWED: 2658
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Friday, August 22, 2003 9:25 AM

Okay, I just thought about this today and maybe you guys all noticed this before but, in bushwhacked Jayne says how Revers never leave survivors... well I always figured this just meant that they killed everyone, all the time. But though the episode we hear how there were a couple families on board the derelict, women and children even, but when Jayne, Simon, and Book are cutting down the bodies, there are only a few bodies, all men are far as I could tell. So, this means that Revers take people with them, right? They kidnap people, maybe to convert into Revers, or just to eat.... does that sound correct? Am I missing something? Have we ever heard of them killing women or children? I remember in the pilot Mal said one guy was killed by Revers when they burned his town down, but I don’t recall ever hearing about women or children dying, just that no one is left alone.

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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

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Friday, August 22, 2003 10:19 AM

VIVAFIREFLY

In the pilot Zoe says Revers will rape you, eat you, and sew you to their clothes. And if your really lucky they'll do it in that order. There's a good chance the other people on board are now a pair of slacks or a steak dinner. My theroy is that some of the men put up a fight and were killed right off. The less agressive people were put on the revers ship for later because the revers like fresh meat.

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Friday, August 22, 2003 12:51 PM

TALRIUS

I suspect Reavers do create more Reavers. With every engagement, we can assume that at least one or two Reavers are killed by the more couragous victums. So it would make sense that from time to time Reavers would take a few potentials and try to change them. Mal gives us the only idea on how a Reaver is created.

MAL
They made him watch. He probably tried to
turn away -- they wouldn't let him. You call
him a "survivor?" He's not. A man comes up
against that kind of will, only way to deal with
it, I suspect... is to become it. He's following
the only course that's left to him. First he'll
try to make himself look like one... cut on himself, desecrate his own flesh... then he'll start acting like one.

So that would make the survivor on the Bushwhacked derelict a recuit. Maybe that's the way Reavers make more, they make them watch the carnage and then leave them alone on their derelict vessel. While they're gone the victim's mind rotts. Just a thought.::

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Friday, August 22, 2003 2:56 PM

JOHNNYREB

Good possibilities. Here is another theory. Maybe the women and children did get it. Jayne says that they leave no one alive, so the director doesn't really have to show you every single body to advance the story. That would waste time being redundant. Besides, showing skinned women and children push the boundries of good taste well past its mark, especially if it doesn't advance the plot. --OR--Maybe some were done in and others were taken captive depending on reaver mood. I hope it's explained in the movie!

Viva Firefly!

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Friday, August 22, 2003 4:07 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

I've said this before, but I'll say it again:

If Reavers are just Cannabilistic Space Monsters I'll be very disappointed.

If you operate a ship (Particularly a ship that isn't even believed to be in service anymore: i.e. a Trans-U) then you HAVE to have a society.

You HAVE to have engineers and technicians. You HAVE to have a way to replenish supplies that goes beyond raiding. (The world's most famous raiders, The Vikings, did some farming. It's not popular to depict that in movies, but it happened.) You have to have people who can build and maintain complex devices. Possibly even weapons.

We've seen that the Reavers leave their victim ships largely intact. That means that they safely board a vessel, and march through it killing, maiming, and raping away. In the Firefly universe, where guns seem to be prolific, this would be suicidal unless you had weapons of your own, or VASTLY superior numbers. A few boarding actions would cost you dozens or hundreds of personnel. These personnel need to be replenished.

'Creating' new Reavers by terrifying victims into becoming like you just isn't practical for large scale recruitment. It can't possibly always work.

That means they have children, or they die out within a generation. Children who are born in raised in Reaver society would see their society as normal. Mayans who mutilated people and kicked their corpses down the stairs did not think of themselves as crazy or evil. They just thought of themselves as Mayans. Just like Western European children who played with the severed testicles of executed prisoners, or kicked around their heads.

What makes the Reavers so crazy, exactly? That they eat other humans? Seafarers have been doing that throughout recorded history, albeit usually under less than ideal living conditions.

That they mutilate and deface themselves? Hey, we have a society of piercers and ink injectors living RIGHT NOW and it's considered mildly exotic... but perfectly normal. We've even got folks who hang themselves up on hooks FOR FUN.

Is it that the Reavers kill innocent people? Every society on Earth does that with varying degrees of public acceptance.

The strangest thing about Reavers is that they have ships with unshielded power cores. This suggests a tolerance to radiation. (Else they'd all be dead.) This reinforces the idea that Reavers are multi-generational. (New recruits wouldn't be any better at surviving radiation poisoning than you or I.) Reavers must have a hardy stock if they can survive for years aboard ships with radiation levels that Wash describes as 'suicide.'

Reaver encounters are rare, else the Alliance would consider them more than myth or legend. It seems that Reavers live mostly on the edges of known space. They need fuel, and more than they can get purely from raiding. They need spare parts and raw materials.

Everything shown on the show suggests a Reaver *society.* Not just a few crazies on the edge of space. It is entirely likely that they have a homeworld of some kind. They probably started out as a group of colonists living on a fringe colony. Things must have gone badly for them. Ever read a book called Polymath?

Anyone can seem crazy if their situation is dire enough. And cultural attributes are slow to change. Maybe you GET crazy because it's the only way to survive. Maybe you STAY crazy because it's not crazy at all... it's just the way things have always been.

Please pass that ear and some tabasco sauce.

--Anthony

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Friday, August 22, 2003 4:10 PM

KAYTHRYN

Quote:
Posted by Johnnyreb:
Jayne says that they leave no one alive, so the director doesn't really have to show you every single body to advance the story.

Yes, but we did get to see Mal and Zoë walk through most of the ship, and I'm pretty sure they didn't see any bodies, even if the camera didn't show the audience because they were pretty darn surprised when they saw those bodies hanging from the ceiling.

-------------------------------------
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

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Friday, August 22, 2003 5:26 PM

JOHNNYREB

I think Anthony T might have it. Kidnap the children and raise them as reavers in a reaver society. Don't know about the women though...

Viva Firefly!

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Friday, August 22, 2003 11:59 PM

DRAKON

The strangest thing about Reavers is that they have ships with unshielded power cores. This suggests a tolerance to radiation. (Else they'd all be dead.)

Not necessarily so. It depends on how much and what type of radiation is being put out. Radiation has become more of a scare word than anything else. While too much is bad, its kinda surprising how much you have to get to show any effects.

In my navy days, I picked up a total of 2 REM over 8 years. People in Denver get about .2 a year, just from natural background and being closer to the sky (cosmic rays)

Since Chernoble (?) the limit is 600 REM. Meaning at this dose rate, with medical intervention, you lose 1/2 the affected population in 2 weeks. At about 100 REM you start vomiting. This is single dose cases, not accumulated over a life time. The long term effects are still not well understood, but so far there appears to be very little damage or injury associated with chronic exposure.

Sea Story: We used to have fun with the nubs (new guys) when they came back asking about reactor shielding. After going over what part of the shield blocked against neutrons, gamma, beta and the such, we'd ask them about neutrino radiation. Nuclear power plants put out a hellacious amount of neutrino radiation, yet we don't shield against it. Let them stew on this for a couple days.

Then, after they are thoroughly worried about turning green and body parts falling off, tell them that the reason why we DON'T shield against neutrinos, is because we CAN'T. Neutrinos are slippery buggers that will zip through lightyears of lead without noticing.

And if you can't sheild for it, you don't need to. If shielding does not attenuate the rad, then neither will the human body.

I know too much about this subject, thanks to Uncle Hymie.

"my kind of stupid"

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Saturday, August 23, 2003 1:39 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Well Drakon,

I agree that not all types of radiation are harmful, and radiation IS used as a scare word.

But the comment about an unshielded core suggests that most cores ARE shielded. The comment is made by a pilot, who ought to know a little something about such things. Not enough to be an expert, mind you, but a nice overview.

So we have humans living on a ship that OUGHT to be shielded but isn't. They are getting a dose of something the pilot considers dangerous. If they run around like this a lot, we can assume their tolerance for the stuff is better than most folks.

Otherwise, Wash would have said something like, "An unshielded core? That's... that's... that's mildly unpleasant and potentially dangerous after long term exposure of at least several years' duration!"

The term he used was 'suicide.' If an informed fella thought it was that bad, I'd tend to agree. Thus, it IS that bad for Wash, but ISN'T that bad for the Reavers.

This suggests a long term tolerance for the stuff, perhaps built up by the Reavers after generations of exposure and a Darwinian lifestyle.

--Anthony

"Life is 100% fatal."

--Vincent Morcini

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Saturday, August 23, 2003 3:44 AM

DRAKON

There is something that occurs in science fiction particularly that I don't see happen in dicsussion of other forms of literature. That of taking every utterance of a character as gospel truth.

In common speech, hyperbole and metaphor are used quite frequently. In our modern culture, we recognize it easily. But in a science fiction story, it is a bit more difficult to tell. And a character is never assumed to lie, or misunderstand any question of science. (Or the writer is never assumed to use any of these techniques.)

Back in the bad old days, Soviet submarines ran without what we considered adequet sheilding. And I would, and actually did, use exactly the very same term to describe my feelings about Soviets subs that Wash did concerning Reavers. That it was suicide.

Yet they still operated. It was not a matter of having higher tolerances, it did shorten the crew members life span, apparently, but only down the road. And Soviet boats were widely known to have problems with sick crews. The Soviet got around this by simply replacing the crews.

I understand your reasoning. If they are doing something that Wash says is suicide, would kill normal people, then obviously it must not be killing them. The flaw I think is assuming that Wash is speaking literally, instead of either metaphorically, or ignoring the possiblity that Reavers may replace their crews frequently, during their raids. Without further information, it is difficult to tell.

[Hmmm.. another idea occured to me. Supposed the shielding had been modified? The Reaver ship is somewhat cylindrical, similar to a sub. Subs have their main shielding all around the reactor, not just along its axis, thus blocking radiation even when not passing through the crew compartment. Rip out the side shielding, and it will emit more radiation out is space, making it look more dangerous than it is.]

"my kind of stupid"

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Saturday, August 23, 2003 4:52 AM

JOHNNYREB

"...making it look more dangerous than it is."

Ah, like the Huns, who used to let some people go so they could run ahead and tell horror stories. When the Huns caught up to them and the next village, the fight was already gone from the terrified inhabitants!

Or, the Scots, who used to put their bagpipers right out front to dishearten their enemy--According to legend. (If the Scottish were fighting other Scottish, would the other Scottish be disheartened listening to bagpipes played by another clan? I don't know how that would work.)

Or, the Luftwaffe who used to attach sirens to the bottoms of the Stutka dive bombers to freak out the people who heard the bombs screaming in.

Damn, I hope that movie comes out to explain these things and more.

Viva Firefly!

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Saturday, August 23, 2003 8:04 AM

BLACKSTAR

Perhaps the Reavers live(for I agree with Anthony in that the Reavers must have some society) on a planet with much higher Radiation levels than on most terriformed planets, thus over the generations builing up a tolerence for it. Then, when the Reavers capture a ship for use as a raider they tear out the unneeded shielding in order to increase their power requirements... remember how the 'obsolete' Trans-U managed to catch Serenity in short order...

Oh, my God! Who's flying this thing! Oh, right, that would be me...

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Saturday, August 23, 2003 8:19 AM

CPTBUCK25

I tend to agree that the lack of sheilding may not be immediate suicide. As Drakon mentioned with the old Soviet subs, they can still operate, just with a higher likelihood of illness. From what we know of the reavers, however, I don't think they'd be too worried about that.

As to why they would pull the sheilding in the first place. It's possible that they had to refurbish a wreck that was found or taken. In doing so they may well have put a more powerful engine into the Trans-U hull than it was originally designed for. To accomplish this, they may have had to do without a few not-quite-so-essentials, like rad shielding. As mentioned before, the reavers don't seem intent on survival so much as bringing violence to bear upon others. The piloting of the Trans-U at the end of Serinity shows little or no regard for the limitations of a worn and obsolete hull. I would imagine the 'crew' on board were more interested in catching their prey than dealing with the concequences of their means.

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