Question about Firefly

[Dominic]

Hey I have a question about Firefly.While I was watching Serenity I saw River freak out and kill all those reavers like no human could. My question is due to the Joss Whedon influence could River be ... The Slayer?!!! It makes sense to me because she is "like nothing we've ever seen" and no one understands how prodigy like she is. And she opened up a can of whup ass like no 90 pound 17 year old should be able to do.

[The_Logic_Ninja]

...

I cry the bitter, bitter tears of suffering.

[WampaX]

Hey I have a question about Firefly.While I was watching Serenity I saw River freak out and kill all those reavers like no human could. My question is due to the Joss Whedon influence could River be ... The Slayer?!!! It makes sense to me because she is "like nothing we've ever seen" and no one understands how prodigy like she is. And she opened up a can of whup ass like no 90 pound 17 year old should be able to do.

Fray (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fray) tells the story of the future of the slayer-line. Though Firefly is set in the same century that Fray is, I doubt that it is connected to the Buffyverse in any way. Refering to Earth as "Earth that was" and saying it had been "used up" seems to indicate that it is not the bussling place presented in Fray.

[Dominic]

yeah, I've read fray. I'm just wondering if maybe the two different story lines are connected by the Slayer. Ans sense they all left Earth that was maybe everyone forgot about the watchers and stuff, so when the government encounters the slayer they have no idea what she is.

[The_Logic_Ninja]

...why would Joss Whedon do something as unbelievable hokey and fan-fiction-y as connecting two completely separate series like that? Buffy's over. "Firefly" (also, sadly, over, albeit prematurely) wasn't Buffy 2: Electric Boogaloo, it was its own show, with its own themes and its own world. It has nothing to do with Buffy.

No, River isn't a Slayer.

[Midnight Son]

besides, if you watch the television show, it does explain how she was made to be what she was made to be. She is definitely not a Slayer.

[Dominic]

wow ok angry people. just a quesation. and all it says on the TV show was that she was a child prodigy never says why. The government just messed with her brain.

[The_Logic_Ninja]

What makes you think I'm angry?

[geek_2049]

Buffy & Serenity/Firefly is not Marvel & DC, no cross overs bub.

[Midnight Son]

wow ok angry people. just a quesation. and all it says on the TV show was that she was a child prodigy never says why. The government just messed with her brain.
She was not a psychic uber-killer till they messed with her brain. before that, she was just an extremely gifted child, both mentally and physically. You can read in that they were also training her to be an assassin and, since it would come naturally to her, she was their best student of assassinry.

[TheThan]

Dwarf71 : She was not a psychic uber-killer till they messed with her brain. before that, she was just an extremely gifted child, both mentally and physically. You can read in that they were also training her to be an assassin and, since it would come naturally to her, she was their best student of assassinry

That’s what I got out of it. Plus I figured they were seeing just how far they could manipulate her mind. People like that have no morals and no sense of restraint when it comes to their work.

[The Prince of Cats]

wow ok angry people. just a quesation.
Look, Firefly had some very devoted fans. Now it is off the air, it has some very bitter fans. (Hey, looks like you can stop the signal!)

Try telling the Dr. Who fans that the Daleks are in fact the love-child of Dusty Bin and a Cyberman and you would get much the same kind of reaction...

[Were-Sandwich]

Try telling the Dr. Who fans that the Daleks are in fact the love-child of Dusty Bin and a Cyberman and you would get much the same kind of reaction...

What you $%*^%(&*(! Daleks r teh L337!111111111

[SlyJohnny]

Joss Whedon acknowledged that he has a problem with creating superpowered adolescent girls who are melee gods, but that he doesn't care. Heh.

[Chaoz]

She never did anything that implied that she was any stronger. She just never got hit, she flows... Like Drizzt. Don't kill me.

[Dominic]

oh well, just a thought.

[DMgrinder]

She never did anything that implied that she was any stronger. She just never got hit, she flows... Like Drizzt. Don't kill me.


That's okay...*BLAM!*

*blows smoke out of barrel* "That'll show him to use the 'D' word."

[awalton87]

Well Joss never created the characters of Buffy and her pals. They started in an extremely bad movie titles, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So there's no way for him to have crossed over the series unless he's a fruitcake fanboii who likes to write crossovers for other people's characters.

[WampaX]

Well Joss never created the characters of Buffy and her pals. They started in an extremely bad movie titles, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So there's no way for him to have crossed over the series unless he's a fruitcake fanboii who likes to write crossovers for other people's characters.


That would not be true. Whedon did create the characters and concept of Buffy and was the script writer for the film. He retained control of the property and eventually he was able to parley it into the TV series.

So he could cross them over . . . it is extremely doubtful that that will/has happen/ed.

[Zeful]

River was a geinius. The goverment stuck a pencil in her head and swirled it around untill they got the desired result, a telepath.
Now telepathic powers can come in many different subleties. Empathic projection, mind reading, mind control, telepathic precognizance and so on. Her fight with the Reavers was just a increadibal exercise in telepatic precognizance (the ability to know your opponent(s) immeadiate moves and not be in the way) she didn't get hit because she read their mind to find where they would strike, and then woved out of the way.

[Dominic]

So how did she knock them out with one punch?

[Zeful]

She, um... she didn't as far as I know, yes she may have elbowed like three of them but they got back up only to be torn down by that axe/sword dual-weilding she did.

And for the record Drizzit copied River. Not the other way around.

[Alchemistmerlin]

And for the record Drizzt copied River. Not the other way around.

I know you're just trying to troll a troll's troll but Drizzt pre-existed Joss' little maniac by quite a bit of time. The Crystal Shard was published in 1988.

By the way, I fixed your spelling error.

Listen kids, I know it's the "cool thing" to hate R.A. Salvatore's work but seriously, grow up.

[Tiberian]

It makes sense to me because she is "like nothing we've ever seen" and no one understands how prodigy like she is. And she opened up a can of whup ass like no 90 pound 17 year old should be able to do.

The problem with that, is that in the last episode of Buffy, every potential slayer who ever was or ever will be, is made into a full slayer. So, by that point, Slayers are well documented as girls who are way too powerful. (in physics)

That is unless, Whedon explained it in Fray - I never read that. If so, how?

[Dominic]

But in the brawl in the bar she knocked some guys out with one hit.

[Poison_Fish]

Actually, you'd be surprised how quickly people go down from just one or two head trauma's. People can both be resilient and go down quickly. Odd how we humans are.

[Zeful]

But in the brawl in the bar she knocked some guys out with one hit.
Yes I forgot about that scene. I chaulk it up to three things:
1.) River was the equiviant of a trained assassin, much like that one guy following them around for the movie
2.) Many of the guys in the bar were not expecting a 90 pound girl to start a fight, much less win, so they had a disadvantage in not wanting to hurt her.
3.)She went fricken' mental. And I know from experiance how much strength that gives
You of course can think of it anyway you like.

[Dominic]

Thank you all very much for your opinions.

[Mr._Blinky]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's implied that they were training her up to be another Operative. If that's the case, she's had serious training, and with the proper martial arts you can do some pretty nasty things to the human body with your bare hands.

[kriklaf]

Actually, you'd be surprised how quickly people go down from just one or two head trauma's. People can both be resilient and go down quickly. Odd how we humans are.
In fact, this was sort of alluded to in 'Shindig,' when Inara tries to teach Mal to use finesse, rather than strength, when using a sword. She tells him that it takes less than one pound of force to puncture skin with a blade (or something like that).

Head blows can in fact kill, if they're hard enough. While I don't think that River has quite that much strength, I have no trouble believing that a well placed kick (say, to the temple or under the chin) could bruise the brain badly enough to put someone down.