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Originally posted by ZachsMind:
I'm simply saying she is not psychic in any mystical sense..... As I understand the definition of the word "psychic," it... (blah blah blah)

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You need to stop this right now. The rest of the world goes by the regular dictionary definition of psychic.

Not only has Joss told us in the dvd's that River is psychic (as has been pointed out already to you), but the overwhelming amount of evidence that could be piled against your arguments are too staggering for me to really take you seriously.


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Inara: Who's winning?
Simon: I can't really tell, they don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules that I know.
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Originally posted by ZachsMind:
... based on her aptitude with guns and inclination to expertly and violently attack anyone she perceives to be an enemy, I surmise they were grooming her to be an intergalactic assassin under their thumb.

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Originally posted by ZachsMind:
He didn't freak out when the only Bible on the ship was ripped to pieces by River. In fact he took it as a consequence of interest. As if he were more interested in River's approach to faith than he was in the sacriledge she was committing. Doesn't sound like a priest to me. Nor to River.

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Originally posted by ZachsMind:
Blue Sun didn't commit devil-worshipping rituals on her or called upon the white pagan gods of nature while lighting candles at River's bedside. Blue Sun cut her head open and treated her grey matter like tossed salad. So if there is no scientific explanation for River, the entire core of the series is in jeopardy.

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She's also important because this episode was designed to be about River, to start dealing with the story of River. What we're seeing obviously are psychic visions of things we've either heard or don't yet understand. We're seeing the teaser through her perspective, which is somewhat disassociative from reality.

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Now right here, we're going through the ship again, to what is my favorite shot, River listening. This shot here, the Batgirl shot as I call it, I had to shoot four times before I found the right angle. The point of the scene, storywise, is that they are being listened to, below and above, by two people who are outsiders, who hear everything they're saying, but, and can understand it on a level that even they can't, since she is psychic and he is so intuitive as to be nearly psychic, yet they also can't understand a great deal of it because it is just, there's a synapse in them that is broken.

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And the fact of the matter is, psychic was exactly as far as I was prepared to go, she wasn't going to become a ship. But the idea that you might believe it, makes you look at the ship in a new way, makes you understand her in a different way, and that's what I was y'know, trying to get at in a large way, besides just having alot of fun.

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Regarding Ruby:

"Her sister got killed. Mother got crazy, killed the sister. That one lived."

Ruby can't speak. So how did River know this about her? Easy. River observed the girl for most of that day, and from Ruby's behavior, River surmised that Ruby once had a sister and a mother but that her mother went crazy and killed her sister, leaving Ruby alone. The fictitious Sherlock Holmes was able to learn much more about a person after observing them for a manner of minutes, so the theory that River could learn about someone after spending a day with them, not far-fetched.

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Originally posted by ZachsMind:
I'm not questioning the validity of psychic phenomena. I'm saying in this case it's not necessary to make that assumption. She can be "psychic" in a nonmagical sense and that's perfectly valid. In which case, the use of the word psychic is misleading.

Which brings us to dear Mister Whedon. From Kurukami's findings on the audio commentary:

"What we're seeing obviously are psychic visions of things we've either heard or don't yet understand."

Notice that Whedon does not refer to River as A psychic. He says what we're obviously seeing are visions of things we've either heard before or don't yet understand. "psychic visions."

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Now right here, we're going through the ship again, to what is my favorite shot, River listening. This shot here, the Batgirl shot as I call it, I had to shoot four times before I found the right angle. The point of the scene, storywise, is that they are being listened to, below and above, by two people who are outsiders, who hear everything they're saying, but, and can understand it on a level that even they can't, since she is psychic and he is so intuitive as to be nearly psychic, yet they also can't understand a great deal of it because it is just, there's a synapse in them that is broken.

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Originally posted by ZachsMind:
Telepathy and precognition have yet to be proven by science.

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Whedon has used psychic phenomena in the BuffyVerse and with great success.....

For speculative fiction it is good to have a scientific basis for everything, or at least the illusion of such. Otherwise the virtuality doesn't hold water. Even if that explanation is left vague for the audience, so long as there is a scientific basis, the fictitious reality holds up better under intense scrutiny.

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Originally posted by zoid:
Browncoat1 wrote:

"I disagree. There is no way by simply observing a little girl physically moving around, if in fact she moved at all, that River could deduce that she had a sister and that their mother went insane & tired to kill them both."

Disagreed. Today's law enforcement personnel have established methodology for criminal interrogation and observation -- initially based upon A.C. Doyle's Holmes, BTW -- which can tell when a detainee is being truthful or not, whether they are hiding something, whether they are sensing guilt... Additionally, Children's Services psych evaluators and field operatives can tell at first glance when a child is being sexually abused, based only on the way the child moves, his or her body language.

Please try again...

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