Ariel...

POSTED BY: freelancertex
UPDATED: Monday, January 7, 2008 15:01
VIEWED: 11057
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FREELANCERTEX

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 1:55 PM

Okay, I was watching Ariel, listening to River's nonsensical ramblings, and I couldn't help thinking...

please stop me if this topic has already been made.

Since she's psychic, and since there were lots of important Alliance people apparently observe subjects such as she, could what she was saying be code in anyway? Something she accidentily plucked from the mind of an Alliance official that only she (and the people she stole the infor from) knows the meaning of? Iunno, maybe this is an obvious fact to other people, but I never really thought about it before. Was wondering if anyone else hadn't thought about it either :-P

*goes back to watching Firefly until it's time for her next class*

__________________________
Have you ever wondered why in a dream you can touch a falling sky?
Or fly to the heavens that watch over you?

"I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar."

A man is least himself when he speaks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will show you his true self.

You can't take the sky from me...

WYTCHCROFT

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 2:01 PM

i think that's a verrry interesting idea!:)

code is possible -
but i think it gets jumbled up with memories and associations (not all her own)
so it would be hard to be certain -
but yeah... hmmm... maybe!

FREELANCERTEX

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 2:24 PM

true as well. but, as she said in one episode, "I remember everything, I remember too much, and some of it's made up...there's secrets" (yes i know thats not the full quote, but I just needed the parts that served my purpose :-P) So it very well could be a combination of memories and things she's 'gleaned' from certain important secret people :P lol

__________________________
Have you ever wondered why in a dream you can touch a falling sky?
Or fly to the heavens that watch over you?

"I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar."

A man is least himself when he speaks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will show you his true self.

You can't take the sky from me...

SCHOOLBOYSWINK

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 5:20 PM

The trouble here is that we don't know exactly how much River was supposed to have had in her head, what it was about, etc. when the Firefly episodes themselves were being written. (Possibly NOBODY knew the specifics, if Joss hadn't decided yet.) We do know for sure that the intended origin of Reavers was changed between the show and the BDM when the story had to kind of switch from a weekly serial to an epic film format, so who knows what else in terms of the info that was supposed to be in River's head, that we now speculate about because of the BDM, was never intended during the time that the episodes themselves were being written.

I believe that most of what River spouts is her own interpretation of the events going on around her, in her fractured reality. This, to me, is just an outgrowth of her inability to "not feel" things; her mental associations and some internal monologues just come flying out of her mouth. Ariel itself contains a perfect example, with her lines about coming downstairs at Christmas and all the presents being gone serving as an analog in her mind for Jayne betraying them and then finding that no reward was coming.

All that said, the quote you cited about "secrets" shows that, even before the BDM, River was supposed to know SOMETHING, and some of what she rambles is difficult to tie in directly to the things that are going on at that time. So, the idea of a code in some of the things she mutters is a possibility, and a very intriguing one at that, especially since she used a code to communicate to Simon that she was in trouble. Now that the direction of the story arc has been changed by the cancellation and subsequent BDM, most sadly, we may never know for sure.

"When you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin' right!" -Jayne Cobb quotes Shepherd Book

FREELANCERTEX

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 9:26 PM

prezactly. :-P

The show will come back. I'll make sure of it :)

__________________________
Have you ever wondered why in a dream you can touch a falling sky?
Or fly to the heavens that watch over you?

"I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar."

A man is least himself when he speaks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will show you his true self.

You can't take the sky from me...

VETERAN

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 11:41 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SchoolboysWink:
....We do know for sure that the intended origin of Reavers was changed between the show and the BDM when the story had to kind of switch from a weekly serial to an epic film format,

Really? I didn't know. you got a link on that?

NBZ

Thursday, October 25, 2007 12:01 AM

People may speak in code, write it, work with it, but I doubt they think in it.

If they did I am of the opinion that River would not have found what she "saw" as traumatic - she would not have understood it.

A mind reading is not like reading a book. you do not get the full story every time.

MERRYK

Thursday, October 25, 2007 12:20 AM

My opinion, partly from what I understand of how Joss writes, and partly because I love realistic psychology, is that River knows way more than she knows she does. Even in her lucid moments, I don't think she would be able to retrieve what she's read. It's probably buried in her memory, due to her mental instability and the way that memory works.

--
"My way of being polite, or however...well, it's the only way I have of showing you that I like you. Of showing respect." Simon Tam, Jaynestown

FREELANCERTEX

Thursday, October 25, 2007 2:02 AM

NBZ, I know they don't THINK in code @_@, what I'm saying is since she can read minds, and the information is there in their minds, she probably picked it out. They don't have to think it for her to retrieve it, it just has to be there.

MerryK, yeah but we don't know exactly when she's lucid and when she's not. When she starts babbling, IF it's code, she's probably in one of her more unstable moments. she doesn't seem to have a firm grasp of reality most of the time anyway. As was said, she's "a bit whimsical in the brainpan."

*shrugs* just my argument though :-P I'm not rejecting what you're saying, it's just I'm trying to clarify my point of view. :)

__________________________
Have you ever wondered why in a dream you can touch a falling sky?
Or fly to the heavens that watch over you?

"I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar."

A man is least himself when he speaks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will show you his true self.

You can't take the sky from me...

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Thursday, October 25, 2007 5:53 AM

I don't see her speaking in code, unless the thought that she read was already in code. She speaks quite straightforward, from what I see. When the ship goes boom, she says Fire, and everybody ignores her until they wander around getting injured and finding out there is a fire - but one example.
When not speaking of the current, then she speaks of the past or of other gleaned memories, likely all of these undiscernable to her.

Of course, as a mother-of-all-geniuses, nobody should be able to understand her fully, so the scriptwriters did an amazingly great job of portraying this.

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