Firefly River vs. Serenity River : fanfic portrayal
POSTED BY: EmpireX
UPDATED: Thursday, March 8, 2007 02:01
VIEWED: 30380
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Whoa! Good post! :)
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Originally posted by Arcadia:
I like Jane Eyre as much as the next person -- it is quite an enjoyable book -- but I don't think it applies here at all. Marriages of young women to older men where common in that period, and why? Because marriage was more of a bussiness for women than a romantic persuit. It was all about getting bang for your buck -- a man who you don't mind too much, and maybe even enjoy if you're lucky, in exchange for a lifetime of being taken care of. If you don't think that reality influenced the feelings of women (and women characters) of that time, then you might want to think about it again. If Jane Eyre was born in the later 20th century I don't think she would have been interested in Rochester. She was smart and resourseful and would have gotten a scholarship and gone to college and lived her life indepentently. She wouldn't need him like she does as a women in the 1800s, and probably wouldn't want him because she'd have the opportunity to be with anyone.
I'm glad you brough this up, because it's so very true. Reminds me of my dad, who always teases my mom, saying all of Jane Austen's books are about "Finding a man." Yet a bare necessity it was. Life in those days, as an old spinster, was quite unpleasant. With no income to your name, and excluded from being able to inherit (!), life for an unmarried woman, unless you were independently wealthy, was hard, to say the least. Essentially you had to rely on the good will of brothers or some such, who'd let you live in with them, if you were so lucky.
Really, if you think about it, that whole era ain't exactly a poster-child for equality between the sexes. In fact, it was quite oppressive in nature, however charitable it may have been dressed up. The lie of it, as Mal would say.
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And River... People keep talking about what she has overcome. As far as I am concerned, she has not really overcome anything. She survived. She lived through hell, and she lived through the confusion that followed, the insanity. Now, it looks like she has gained some clarity. What does that mean? It means it will get even harder. Now, she can go through the horrible process of processing what happened to her. She's never really dealt with what happened to her. How could she? She's had no control over her emotions or her mind, of any part of her life. She has it now, and that is going to be traumatic in its own way. Its a good step in the long run, but it is still going to be a hard adjustment.
Excellent points, too.
In many ways, River's still at the most basic survival level: trying to function like a girl. And, as you so astutely pointed out, especially now that's she been able to unburden the Miranda secret, and the immediate edge is off, the real process of dealing with what happened to her has yet to unfold. At times she'll have to deal with anger, or the sadness over her losses. Or reliving the feeling of being powerless to do much more than undergo the abuses. And the flashbacks. And she'll have to cope with all of this sans her amygdela, unable to stop the occasional torrent of emotion. Contradictory as it may sound, the more normal she becomes, the harder things will be for her in the beginning.
And you're right, we have to be open to the real possibility that River may never fully recover. And that's not painting her as weak, but simply an acknowlegement of the fact that they hurt her pretty badly. And some things, like stripping her amygdela, that stuff don't grow back, either.
River has a sweetness to her, most assuredly. And I think she'll be able to find someone. But, far as I'm concerned, Jayne can go play with his rainstick. And Mal, I know, wouldn't even try anything with her.
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"Mei-mei, everything I have is right here." -- Simon Tam
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“I’m alright. I’m alright.” River is given very few lines throughout the series and movie, so I think these final lines in the BDM are quite poignant and telling. The give me the hope that she is indeed on the road to recovery. You my not see it as so, but I’ll take it as hint from the man himself.
Yes, *sarcastically* Jane fell in love with Mr. Rochester solely because she had no other options to her. You are aware that the novel is a romance? If you want to argue that point, then it is comparable. River doesn’t have very many options to her and neither does Jayne. Proximity alone can be a dangerous thing.
As easily as you pointed out the lack of parallels between the two stories, there are equally as many in support. The stories do not mirror each other completely in circumstances, but neither do our lives and societal standards to a piece of fiction set 500 years in the future.
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“And by that I mean, she has not explored her personality -- her interests, her hobbies -- for a long time. How long has it been since she's read a book, learned a new dance?”
She’s doing these things throughout the series!
A teen boy could not handle all that would entail being involved with a psychic genius killer. You’re forgetting River’s dark side, which you like it or not is now apart of who she is. I imagine killing a man with your bare hands will make you grow up really fast. Someone like Jayne could understand what it’s like living with that on your conscious.
Don’t worry, I’m sure River knows where her pleasure center is. If not, Jayne can help her find it. : )
ETA: I’m done. I'm wasting time when I could be writing another chapter of pervery fanfiction. Let’s just agree to disagree. Just know us shippers have our reasons for certain pairings that delve beyond the apparent, like it or not.
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“Hell is coming to breakfast.”
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Wow...this thread's started moving away from the main topic just a tad
I get the feeling this subject is a hidden tiger pit for Browncoats, since we got supporters of River not being quite capable or ready for exploring who she is as a person (which has a lot of valid points, mind you) verbally skirmishing with people like myself who seem to view River as someone with decent stability and conscious control over herself (which is subjective, I admit).
Like I iterated before, the issue over our differing interpretations is limited canonical source material mixing with personal beliefs and perspectives. And that's good...we're getting honest and hopefully well-presented arguments from both sides. But this topic is one hell of a sandbox that we are mighty interested in exploring...but it ain't ours. It may seem like a weak or usless ponderance, but I gotta wonder how each camp would have handled seeing stories where River started wanting to get all kinds of freaky with an older man.
In two previous series, Joss made some big decisions concerning creating couples where there was some serious age and experience differences between the partners and we got to see how those generally fell apart or stayed strong, depending on the match-up. Also, since Joss was using the American expansion westward and the Reconstruction period after the US Civil War as an inspiration point, it's not completely presumptious to think - at least I personally feel this - that Our Fearful Leader & co. could have deigned to explore ideas like River actually attempting to start something with Mal or Jayne out of a perceived notion of sameness for one reason or another. No assertion that it would have worked or lasted, but it's a possibility all the same.
River's got a long road full of paths to explore before she can really know who she is. That's not really needing debate, as assuming the Miranda Wave fixed everything is painfully naive. What I quibble over is how many teenagers of either gender have the maturity or je ne sais quoi to be able to handle something like River rightly struggling to deal with her imposed brain damage and abilities, on top of the memories and feelings relating to what both the Academy and River herself did.
BEB
Literature has shown us some of humanity's greatest achievements; history, some of our greatest failures -- Alun Lewis
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My main point of disagreement with RomanceGuru is, I think, the fact that her/his argument seems to be that high intelligence and the ability to read minds make up for the lack of life experience. That these things, somehow, imply an emotional maturity and self-awareness gained by theoretical and rational hypotheses.
I profoundly disagree with that. There is a reason it's called life experience. You have to go through certain things, know what they feel/taste/smell like and the way you react to those things. This is what enables you to make better choices, understand yourself and, very importantly, understand other people and their own experiences.
Experience can never be predicted or intuited and even if she gleaned those things from other people's memories, it would not be her own experience. It would, essentially, be a completely irrelevant object of comparison - because she doesn't have anything to compare it to.
Experience is the deciding factor, not the ability to imagine or theorize or make scientific guesses.
River doesn't have any life experience, unless you make it a competition in torture, because she has some life experience in that, but that doesn't translate to other areas in life.
Quite frankly, any more or less emotionally developed man in his mid-thirties should be bored trying to have an actual romantic (not just sexual) relationship with River, because she quite simply would be making all those silly first-time mistakes, have all those first-time illusions that more experienced people have had, grown beyond and dismissed, have come to terms with. That gap would automatically create a mentor/student dynamic, superiority and inferiority, authority and deference. Quite simply, unhealthy and unattractive to anyone not into control-play.
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I've been having thoughts about something Asarian got into waaaay back:
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All of a sudden reading how River is grappling with any of the crew -- apart from finding it all manner of distasteful to take advantage of a mentally traumatized seventeen year old girl -- really, IMNSHO, violates not just River, but the very fabric of Firefly itself.
I must go further with this idea of the fabric of Firefly, because it's such a strong idea.
As I see it, the main story to Firefly/Serenity is Mal's ongoing conflict with the Alliance. River's character serves as the push to get him back into that battle. She's an innocent that got trampled by the Alliance, and as such she brings out a protective instinct in the crew. OK, not in Jayne, but certainly in Mal. Because he chooses to protect her, and not to abandon her, she gets them all to Miranda. She's like the drop that starts the flood or something like that.
Her role is to return idealism and self-sacrifice to a hardened and self-serving crew, and her youth and inexperience are absolutely necessary for that. The fact that she's half fighting machine just heightens the tragedy of what the Alliance has done to her, because River herself is not a killer. The part of her they created and control through subconscious triggers is the killer. In the movie, she finds a way to reach that part of herself, but she does it to save the people she loves. She's still very much an innocent - and even more tragic because she's accepted this dark part of herself that she abhors, sacrificing some of her innocence to save her brother.
So... having River just jump into bed with Mal or Jayne (oh yes, there are those fics where it's that simple. "I'm 18 now, I'm going to bed who I want!" *shudder*) completely goes against what Joss has so carefully set up. It's not something I can stomach.
I'm not saying that people can't write what they choose, and hey - River and Jayne are both played by beautiful actors. Sure, there's going to be readers who like smut about them, and there's an audience for that.
But if anyone is trying to write drama about the complexity of these characters and their verse - you have to take into account River's lack of life experience... if you don't, it sells her, and this story, and the entire `verse that we love short.
IMNSHO.
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I'm the president. I don't need to listen.
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Wanted to sit on this for a while before chipping in my two cents. Decided to see if anyone was saying the same stuff I was thinking.
In regard to River herself as a character, I actually didn't find her that interesting of a character in the show. For the most part with FIREFLY and a little bit of SERENITY, she doesn't really do anything. All she does is look forlonging, stand in a corner and babble and cry. Pretty one note, IMHO. And it's a bit of a problem where you see everyone making a big deal over her and have these two sides fighting over her, and she doesn't even get a say in all this. No one asks her "What do you want to do." When people make decisions for a character and the character just goes along with it, it makes for a pretty bland character.
That being said, River started to become interesting when she finally DOES something. When she guns down Niska's men in "War Stories" or plays mindgames with Early in "Objects in Space" or goes to get the medical bag from the Reavers in SERENITY. That's when she becomes an actual character.
One of the more conscious things I've done in my stories is to actually have River make decisions for herself. She decides to give the whole rock music thing another try, and ends up discovering her salvation. When Simon and Gabriel fight over her, she basically goes "Fuck this" and leaves on her own valition, which has a domino effect in that 24 horus later, she's becoming a rock goddess to a disenfranchised generation. And very soon, when I finally get down and write the concert itself and bridge the stuff I've already written, she'll make the biggest decision of her life on her own.
But to answer your question, no I don't think she should shack up with Mal or Jayne. I prefer fanfics where she's interested in a guy of her own age, which is partially why I created Johnny. To have sort of a parallel male version of River so that they would fit with each other.
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Now mind you, I wasn't on fan-sites at the time, but my question is this:
Where were the people defending said character's virtue (for lack of a better term), when a certain sixteen-year-old slayer and a 240-year-old vampire were shacking up?
Now I know people are going to object and say that it's a completely different situation, but one of the things this arguement seems to be about is life experience and maturity. Not many teenagers have those traits. Not to mention that if you compare the two characters, both are girls that are in extraordinary circumstances, and both have no one they can really go to their own age that would understand what they're going through.
If we're going to argue overly long about this, then we can't exactly pretend that it hasn't happened before in a Joss-helmed series. Joss found a way to deal with it then, and I think that he could have found a way to do it again, even with the new set of circumstances. And more to the point, fan fiction is a great way to explore that particular idea.
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"I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life."
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Quote:
Originally posted by deepgirl187:
Now mind you, I wasn't on fan-sites at the time, but my question is this:
Where were the people defending said character's virtue (for lack of a better term), when a certain sixteen-year-old slayer and a 240-year-old vampire were shacking up?
To be honest, I DO find Angel/Buffy creepy, as well.
I suspect the point there was supposed to be that his own emotional maturity was stunted or some such, but... I can neither stand Buffy's character nor much of the series, so the "Joss did it in another show, so it has to be right" argument largely flies past me with no impact at all.
River is not Buffy. They have similar qualities (mainly, teenaged fighting machines), but they are not identical in any way shape or form.
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There are such fundamental differences... Buffy was very much forced to grow up early - it's a recurring theme through the series. She's on her own. River, on the other hand, is NOT a leader. She's sheltered and cared for, largely unable to make her own decisions. (though that will certainly change after the movie, I believe.)
Also, when Angel first showed up in Season 1 of Buffy, he looked like a teenager himself, which served to soften the creepy factor.
Hey - and note what happened when Buffy and Angel had sex. Joss uses monster stories to draw parallels to real life issues - she has sex with this mysterious, slightly dangerous (in a sexy way) older man and he completely changes and turns evil. This is an exaggerated take on a situation many young girls/women get into when they jump into a relationship before they're ready, and that's what makes much of Buffy season 2 so poignant - we identify with her position.
I am sooo side-tracked right now. Sorry. Work avoidance.
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I'm the president. I don't need to listen.
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Most of the characters on the show are a contradiction to morality.
Please do not hold them to your rigorous ideals. There is vast room for interpretation in the verse.
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“Hell is coming to breakfast.”
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