Where are the chicks? Ahem... I mean Reaverettes?
POSTED BY: IsaacShepherd
UPDATED: Saturday, February 18, 2006 18:57
VIEWED: 9454
PAGE 4 of 4
This is a topic that will never be fully settled in our minds I'm thinking.
It would seem a bit too unbelievable that Reavers can contaminate you with some type of disease that turns you into one of them.I think we need to think less in a sci-fi mode and more of a western mode for specific answers as to how the Reavers themselves increase their numbers.
Now remember that Firefly is at it's heart just an anology for the Old West.Yes I know spacecraft and all but it's still true!
Okay now althoughthe Indians of the Old West had their reasons for all the brutality and they weren't "created" by mankinds folly,(although...)they are the proper equivalent of the reavers for our purposes.Yes they had families and children unlike the raevers but like the reavers they would attack "innocent" people out on the plains and would do terrible,unspeakable things to them.Namely the raping and mutilating(scalping!)and just overall torture.Very little of what the reavbers are accused of is not something the indians were also accused of.Sometimes wrongly but very often not.My point is that some persons who were captured by the Indians were never the same again,they went insane and typically stayed that way for the rest of their lives.Som eof these persons were taken into the tribe and sometimes completely lost their identity as a "civilized" person.Sometimes children were taken and then adopted into the tribe and taught the ways of that particular tribe.
Our redskinned brothers were fighting a war against us but generally we just saw them as a scourge and as madmen that were beyond reason and totally savage and beyond anything that we could comprehend.
So I guess that that might be the primary means of "reproduction" among the reavers,abductions.We do see the one individuals reaction to having witnessed the horror of the fates of those persons aboard his ship.Also as to the pax being tranmissible via a bite or something or their having it in their atmo' then why wouldn't there have been some residual of it when our band of BDH's boarded the derelict ship?They were on board for a while and if the reavers use the gas to convert folk then you think that Mal and co. would have been at least slightly affected.
Just some thoughts and opinions on a very fun subject!Hell this is more fun to debate than smoth head vs. bumpy head Klingons!!!
like a trained ape without the training!!!
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Maybe it's the opposite: The Reavers can sense each other, but not anyone else (either they aren't receiving, or they're screaming out so much rage and madness that they just can't "hear" calm, orderly thoughts). No one not-Reaver seems "real," so they don't register as "people," just schizoid nightmare hallucinations. There's a thought; Reavers find us as repulsive and monstrous as we find them. Maybe that's why they cut on themselves --they start seeing their own selves as monsters, and try to cut out the bad parts. . .
Originally posted by Kaele:
But this is exactly the opposite of my point. The Pax drug made River hyper-sensitive, and I'm assuming did the same to the Reavers. But they can't sense each other, hence not attacking one another.
So anyway, back to the psychic thing: Reavers attack a ship, the crew panics. Some of them cower in fear (they don't register, and are raped and/or killed), some fight back rationally (they register as threats, and are killed), while some, just a tiny fraction, fight back with a Reaver-like frenzy, just on the border between terror and blind rage. Now, they're speaking the Reavers' language, and they are recognized as kin.
As for River, she's lucid. Even in her crazy times, she's more self-aware and logical than a typical Reaver. To them, her brain would feel like that of a normal human. But she can hear them, like listening in on your enemy's communications during a battle. Suddenly she can fight like a Reaver, know where the line is between Fear and Rage, and can use that boundary line as her weapon, taking Rage and sidestepping it, turning it into Fear. Suddenly the Reavers stop being Reavers, and become. . . Something less. Prey.
-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Reaver population control:
I think Reavers increase, or add to, by recruitment. Remember what Mal said about a man being made to face that kind of darkness--No choice but to join them.
Remember when the crew was going through Reaver territory on the way to Miranda (in the BDM), they heard lots and lots of people screaming and saw one ship get torn apart. So perhaps these organized Reavers take prisoners and then do the spatula thingy(turn them).
30,000 seems like a lot. 12 years from point of Pax on Miranda it seems that their population has stayed the same or grown (mind you not necessarily the same Reavers, but numbers wise the same).
Another question regarding Reaver population: Did the whole Reaver fleet follow Serenity to Mr. Universe's place? If so, did they all get killed by Alliance or the Crew? If not, how did the Alliance get to the Crew? And also if not, did some Reavers cut and run? Are they still in existence and a threat?
Also, I agree with the Western analogy idea. I don't agree with the person's take on Native Americans. It seemed the person was speaking of a stereotype, not the reality. At least I'm hoping that was what the person meant. Also, remember the Government in the West did terrible things to the Native Americans as well (like Pax on Miranda). And remember the conversation the Crew had about history writing--so true.
Jayne, your mouth is talking. You might want to see to that.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME