Reavers!
POSTED BY: zoid
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 13, 2004 16:24
VIEWED: 10220
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Greetings, 'coats:
Having enjoyed your posts on an extended basis for the past week or so (less frequently before that), I've found quite a few that basically express, "Reavers are intriguing/scary/cool". So I thought we might like to explore exactly what Reavers are.
Well, since Firefly is basically a Western, an analogue from old oaters might apply. I think they're Injuns, Redskins, Heathen Red Devils, whatever...
Now, when I had this thought originally, I thought, "Wow. An archaic racial stereotype/epithet. I'm not so sure that's a very good idea." The American 'Indian' (Amerind, in anthropology), has gotten a raw deal since European settlers first came to the Americas, and only recently have misconceptions about their culture and value systems been revised to reflect that theirs was, at the very least, a thriving one, less violent than ours, and in equilibrium with their environment. So, Reavers being equated with 'Injuns' from the epic Westerns of the late 50's, seemed more than a bit unfair and unsympathetic to the treatment those peoples received during our Manifest Destiny Era.
Then, I started thinking in greater depth. What do we know about Reavers based on clues from the show? We know they'll "rape us to death, eat our flesh and sew our skins into their clothing", per Zoe, who added we'd be very lucky if they did it in that order. Not very neighborly. We also know that they frequently don't kill everyone, but rather "make them watch" while they -- in variable order -- rape/skin/eat family members and friends. That's how we got our survivor in "Bushwhacked", you'll recall.
That survivor, by the time FF's crew had found him, was already babbling and showing signs of 'converting' into a Reaver himself. That transformation completed itself on the Alliance Cruiser Dortmund(?), and he split his tongue, slashed up some medicos, and pierced his cheek and possibly other parts of his anatomy with large, sharp looking pieces of metal.
Let's break for a second and examine a corresponding scene from a Western flick. There's one I remember from my youth in which the white settler daughter had been abducted by 'Injuns' and turned into a savage over the years of living with them. I can no longer recall the name of the movie ("The Searchers", or "Cheyenne Autumn"?), but in it a party of lawmen regain several now-grown children from the captivity of 'Injuns'. One of the rescued females, clearly chafing in 'civilized' clothing, is found having just murdered her father or husband, holding his bloody scalp in one hand and a knife in the other, letting out a war whoop.
That's the correlation between Reavers of the "New West" of Firefly and the "Old West" of North America. But what other similarities may exist? While it was certainly true that there were some genuinely bellicose tribes, most Amerinds fought because they were being invaded, chased off of their lands and hunting routes, and their primary source of food, shelter and clothing -- the buffalo -- methodically hunted to extinction.
Perhaps -- and this is a stretch -- the new worlds upon which the Earth settlers performed terraforming and established colonies were not uninhabited? Perhaps some form of hive mind microorganism inhabited one or more of the planets. When these come into contact with human life, they invade the body and eventually take over the mind of the victim. Hence the delay btween finding the survivor and his 'conversion' into a Reaver.
While I'm shooting in the dark here, what if the 'hive' don't care about radiation poisoning, because a human body is just a vehicle to them, and their use of it wears it out pretty quickly anyway. They only need to make sure they get a fresh supply of humans, some for food and some to supply new bodies for the ones they're burning out. This would explain Reaver raids of human colonies, the stated fact that their territories are spreading, and why sometimes they would attack, others not, depending on whether or not they "are hungry".
...Or just needing a new set of whe
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Sounds interesting but then it makes me think of the Borg assimilating people too.
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Reavers ain't human...or they forgot how to be. So says Mal. He seems to know alot about Reavers, how I'm not sure. Even to the point of how they make victims watch...
Then there is Book, who thinks there is a 'higher power' ..or puts out that viewpoint as a man of god.
As for Reavers, I don't know. I get your point about 'Injuns' , but please don't make such a broad brush. They're either men who went too far to the edge of the Galaxy, or perhaps they are an experiment gone really really bad. eg) see hands of blue, 2 x 2.
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. Worked that out myself. "
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They're freelance terrorists working for/created by the Alliance to scare the frontier planets and justify the need for Alliance "protection".
SergeantX
"..and here's to all the dreamers, may our open hearts find rest." -- Nanci Griffith
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Reavers are almost certainly not alien organisms. Joss has been quoted several times in the top-bar of this site as rejecting "aliens".
As for the Native American Analogy...eh...I see them as being a little more archetypal than that. "Barbarians", certainly. To the Romans the Celts, the Goths, and the Vandals were all pretty scary things, and they told some wild tales about them, too.
Though, if you want to use the Native American analogy, let's remember that scalping was not a practice of theirs until the "civilized" nations of the French and British starting paying bounties for proof that the other nation's settlers were dead.
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Ah, yes, as far as operating without core containment, Wash tells us it is suicide but doesn't elaborate. Who knows, operating without core containemtnt might up your energy output and redline your engine making you go really, really fast. But it might also increase your chances of blowing up at the same time. Kinda like the difference between riding bareback and with a stiff, heavy saddle. Bareback you get a real good feel for the horse but you risk falling off more readily than if you use the saddle. 'Course if you ride so well you're apt to be mistaken for a centaur, you might not think fallin' off was all that likely. Might be contemptuous of those as employ saddles.
See, it might not have anything to do with radiation poisoning....
Ljosalf
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922)
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I don't post much here, and I have not been active on this board except in the last month. So, hi to Zoid and anyone else reading this.
While I think your possible explanation for the origins of the Reavers is well thought out, Zoid, I think it is wrong. Your explaination, while as good as most and very well thought out, does not seem to jive with the other "scifi" elements of the series. There seems to be an attempt to minimize the most extreme scifi elements of Firefly to the extent that is needed to tell the story. The introduction of Ghosts of Mars style microbes--good analogy their, by the way--into the mix just seems out of step with that general feel of the show; that seems to be more of a Star Trek style plot device, anyway. Also, if their were microbes doing this, it would seem that the capitan of the Alliance crusier would have had some blood-to-blood contact with Reaver-boy, and could be infected (although Mal and Jayne are not, despite also having very close contact with him). I really don't think that if we see that capitan again, it will be as the capitan of a Reaver vessel that used to be an Alliance crusier.
I think that from a dramatic stand point, you are very right that the Indians in older Westerns are similar to the Reavers. I personally think of the Reavers in terms of the boys (good, civilized, English boys) in Lord of the Flies and the Vikings or some other raiding culture. They seem to have developed their own society out alone in the black and don't have much of a problem using other people to have fun or obtain the nessecities of life. The other people they take from and kill are maybe not viewed as real people.
Just a thought. Perhaps the mindset of the Reavers could be better explained in terms of Uruk Hai in Tolkien. They value their own strength, and don't mind testing the 'strength' of their captives to see "what's inside." The Uruk Hai leader pulls Stider's sword into him at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring movie, because he is just that hardcore; seems kinda like a Reaver thing to me. (BTW, I am not saying that the Reavers are tortured and corrupted Elves twisted into the service of Morgoth or that they are the hybrid of Men and affore mentioned corrupted Elves. They are still Homo sapiens, even if they ain't men.) 
This post has been edited for greater clarity, and edited again because I didn't proof read my gorram post.
Jon
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Quote:
Originally posted by ljosalf:
Ah, yes, as far as operating without core containment, Wash tells us it is suicide but doesn't elaborate. Who knows, operating without core containemtnt might up your energy output and redline your engine making you go really, really fast. But it might also increase your chances of blowing up at the same time. Kinda like the difference between riding bareback and with a stiff, heavy saddle. Bareback you get a real good feel for the horse but you risk falling off more readily than if you use the saddle. 'Course if you ride so well you're apt to be mistaken for a centaur, you might not think fallin' off was all that likely. Might be contemptuous of those as employ saddles.
See, it might not have anything to do with radiation poisoning....
Ljosalf
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922)
A more modern analogy is the Soviet Submarines of the 60's (Hotels, Echoes, and Novembers). These poorly constructed ships had half the radiation shielding of other nuclear subs of their day, this had the effect of increasing their speed but eradiating the crew and leaving a radioactive wake that can be tracked. Sounds very similar to the Reaver Ship.
The idea that the Reavers are really people operating on the behalf of the Alliance to enforce law in the border worlds is renascent of the game Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos. In the game the "Marauders" are a group of pirates who pray upon ships in a particular region on behalf of a corporation that controls part of the government.
The Firefly CCG Web Site:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Bllm119/firefly_ccg_web_site.htm
>Help out today!
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My point is that everyone assumes that operating "without core containment" means "radiation hazard" when Joss has very cleverly avoided telling us exactly how things work. His characters frequently just know. For instance, Mal and Kaylee looking at the floating chandelier in Shindig know how it is done but they don't lecture each other (and us) about the how of it. They just react to its extravagance. So, engines in the Firefly 'verse might not be powered by radioactive material. Nobody seemed too concerned about radiation in Out of Gas when the fire ripped through the engine room.
Alternately, radioactivity is involved but there could be a whopping hell of a difference between operating without core containment and operating without adequate shielding.
Ljosalf
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922)
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I agree, when Wash said that line the first time I watched I did not automatically think of radiation poisioning. I was thinking more of the engine being pushed to a limit that might be dangerous and unstable resulting in a possible explosion.
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