Rever Theories
POSTED BY: Kaythryn
UPDATED: Monday, May 5, 2003 18:53
VIEWED: 7801
PAGE 4 of 4
I'm surprised that no one has brought up Cabin Fever theory. It was a real danger to traders and scouts. I think the Reavers were people who went out into the black, like French & Spanish Traders and scouts who didn't turn into "mountain men" but rather the crazy men of the west. I have an aunt who lives in Alaska and she says the internet and cable are a god send. Alaska paid for her schooling so she *has* to live there as part of her payback method. She's seen co-workers go a bit south after an Alaskian winter.
With Joss, he's hypered the effect, since it's a TV show and you need real black and white lines to help outline the grey ones. Reavers are the black line. Those who've gone mad. The White line is what the show is about, where should/does it land.
As for the savageness, Canniblilism & Mutilation is usually perceved as human extream. Those in BDSM have ridged rules of contact and behaviour so transfer that and you got reavers able to fly. Same with cannabilistic tribes & cultures. You don't just eat anyone, many times your eating them to take their power or spirit into yourself to make you stronger.
Since the show was cancled and it looks like we'll never really know, I do want to point out Iris by Goo Goo Dolls. "When everything feels like the movies, Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive." It describes SI, a mental condition, Self Injury that many suffer from. Wisconson U in Madison actually has a program for awareness and treatment of people suffering from SI.
In the black with nothing to hold you down, you'd get extream. You'd have to come up with new rules and rituals, even those who reject R&R usually come back to them, just in a different form.
There is also no telling what no core containment could also be doing. Reavers may be sterile, hence their "adoption" practice. Maybe one was left behind but others taken or the one could be a rebirth ritual, like the vampire stories where a vampire has to dig himself out of his own grave before he's accepted. The booby traps were a way to protect the new Reaver or a way to punish those who would try to take their new Reaver from them.
I'm sure that Reaver pre-date and are seperate from Alliance and Brown-coats. The war took place is Simon & Zoe's lifetime so they would hardly hear "campfire" stories about them. I also think the Reaver stories are annalogus to Urban legends. Most UL's are old, just reincarnated into modern environs. Some UL's go back into the past to the black plauge and middle ages. Lots of it can be speculations and stories but Mal & Zoe have been on the run long enough to hear more stories and find out that many are true. Going back, is seems like only the core people, Simon, River, Book, little bit Inara, are the ones in the dark about Reavers. Both Wash and Jayne have an idea of Reavers.
"Futue te ipsum et caballum tuum!"
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I tried to get across insanity as an alternitve to cabin fever. Anyway, with the whole campfire aspect you have to realize that the storys are usualy real. Vampires for example, if you lived in the 1800's you knew vampires were real, and they were everywhere. Who cared about the faxct that they stayed out of the sun and avioded garlic as an effect of raibes, or that they were biting people not to drink blood but because rabies drives 1/4 of it's victems to do so. And the fact that the people digging themselves out of thier own graves were usualy catatonics of coma victems also had no effect.
The truth is that the myth was real, there were people going around biting people, and they were driven away by garlic and sunlight, not to mention water-which was belived to cancel out magic. And there were people riseing from the grave.
The legends of the Revers could be just like that completely correct, the only thing that would be unclear would be the motives.
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