#mad max fiction

[filmgifs]

ANYA TAYLOR-JOY as Furiosa FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA — 2024, dir. George Miller

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Against Lore

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

One of my favorite nuggets of writing advice comes from James D Macdonald. Jim, a Navy vet with an encylopedic knowledge of gun lore, explained to a group of non-gun people how to write guns without getting derided by other gun people: "just add the word 'modified.'"

As in, "Her modified AR-15 kicked against her shoulder as she squeezed the trigger, but she held it steady on the car door, watching it disintegrate in a spatter of bullet-holes."

Jim's big idea was that gun people couldn't help but chew away at the verisimilitude of your fictional guns, their brains would automatically latch onto them and try to find the errors. But the word "modified" hijacked that impulse and turned it to the writer's advantage: a gun person's imagination gnaws at that word "modified," spinning up the cleverest possible explanation for how the gun in question could behave as depicted.

In other words, the gun person's impulse to one-up the writer by demonstrating their superior knowledge becomes an impulse to impart that superior knowledge to the writer. "Modified" puts the expert and the bullshitter on the same team, and conscripts the expert into fleshing out the bullshitter's lies.

Yes, writing is lying. Storytelling is genuinely weird. A storyteller who has successfully captured the audience has done so by convincing their hindbrains to care about the tribulations of imaginary people. These are people whose suffering, by definition, do not matter. Imaginary things didn't happen, so they can't matter. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet were less tragic than the death of the yogurt you had for breakfast. That yogurt was alive and now it's dead, whereas R&J never lived, never died, and don't matter:

https://locusmag.com/2014/11/cory-doctorow-stories-are-a-fuggly-hack/

Hijacking a stranger's empathic response is intrinsically adversarial. While storytelling is a benign activity, its underlying mechanic is extremely dangerous. Getting us to care about things that don't matter is how novels and movies work, but it's also how cults and cons work.

Cult leaders and con-artists know that they're engaged in mind-to-mind combat, and they make liberal use of Jim's hack of leaving blank spots for the mark to fill in. Think of Qanon drops: the mystical nonsense was just close enough to sensical that a vulnerable audience was compelled to try and untangle them, and ended up imparting more meaning to them than the hustler who posted them ever could have dreamt up.

Same with cons – there's a great scene in the Leverage: Redemption heist show where an experienced con-artist explains to a novice that the most convincing hustle is the one where you wait for the mark to tell you what they think you're doing, then run with it (scambaiters and other skeptics will recognize this as a relative of the "cold reading," where a "psychic" uses your own confirmations to flesh out their predictions).

As Douglas Adams put it:

A towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Magicians know this one, too. The point of a sleight is to misdirect the audience's attention, and use that moment of misattention to trick them, vanishing, stashing or producing something. The mark's mind is caught in a pleasurable agony: something seemingly impossible just happened. The mind splits into two parts, one of which insists that the impossible just happened, the other insisting that the impossible can't happen.

You know you've done it right if the audience says, "Do that again!" And that's the one thing you must not do. So long as you don't repeat the trick, the audience's imagination will chew on it endlessly, coming up with incredibly clever things that you must have done (a clever conjurer will know several ways to produce the same effect and will "do it again" by reproducing the effect via different means, which exponentially increases the audience's automatic imputation of clever methods to the performer).

Not for nothing, Jim Macdonald advises his writing students to study Magic and Showmanship, a classic text for aspiring conjurers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/11/13/magic-and-showmanship-classic-book-about-conjuring-has-many-lessons-for-writers/

There's a version of this in comedy, too. The scholarship of humor is clear on this: comedy comes from surprise. The audience knows they're about to be surprised when the punchline lands, and their mind is furiously trying to defuse the comedian's bomb before it detonates, cycling through potential punchlines of their own. This ramps up the suspense and the tension, so when the comedian does drop the punchline, the tension is released in a whoosh of laughter.

Your mind wants the tension to be resolved ASAP, but the pleasure comes from having that desire thwarted. Comedy – like most performance – has an element of authoritarianism. You don't give the audience what it wants, you give it what it needs.

Same goes for TTRPGs: the game master's role is to deny the players the victories and treasure they want, until they can't take it anymore, and then deliver it. That's the definition of an epic game. It's one of the durable advantages of human GMs over video game back-ends: they can ramp up the epicness by "cheating" on the play, giving the players the chance to squeak out improbable victories at the last possible second:

https://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/03/behind-the-screen.html

This is so effective that even crude approximations of it can turn video-games into cult hits – like Left4Dead, whose "Director" back-end would notice when the players were about to get destroyed and then substantially ramped up the chances of finding an amazing weapon – the chance would still be low overall, but there would be enough moments when the player got exactly what they'd been praying for, at the last possible instant, that it would feel amazing:

https://left4dead.fandom.com/wiki/The_Director#Special_Infected

Critically, Left4Dead's Director didn't do this every time. As any showman knows, the key to a great performance is "Always leave 'em wanting more." The musician's successful finale depends on doing every encore the audience demands, except the last one, so the crowd leaves with one tantalyzing and imaginary song playing in their minds, a performance better than any the musicians themselves could have delivered. Like the gun person who comes up with a cooler mod than the writer ever could, like the magic show attendee who comes up with a more elaborate explanation for the sleight than the conjurer could ever pull off, like the comedy club attendee whose imagination anticipates a surprise that grows larger the longer the joke goes on, the successful performance is an adversarial act of cooperation where the audience willingly and unwillingly cooperates with the performer to deny them the thing that they think they need, and deliver the thing they actually need.

This is my biggest problem with the notion that someday LLMs will get good enough at storytelling to give us the tales we demand, without having to suffer through a storyteller's sadistic denial of the resolutions we crave. When I'm reading a mystery, I want to turn to the last page and find out whodunnit, but I know that doing so will ruin the story. Telling the storyteller how the story should go is like trying to tickle yourself.

Like being tickled, experiencing only fun if the tickler respects your boundaries – but, like being tickled, there's always a part where you're squirming away, but you don't want it to stop. An AI storyteller that gives you exactly what you want is like a dungeon master who declares that every sword-swing kills the monster, and every treasure chest is full of epic items and platinum pieces. Yes, that's what you want, but if you get it, what's the point?

Seen in this light, performance is a kind of sado-masochism, where the performer delights in denying something to the audience, who, in turn, delights in the denial. Don't give the audience what they want, give them what they need.

What your audience needs is their own imagination. Decades ago, I was a freelance copywriter producing sales materials for Alias/Wavefront, a then-leading CGI firm that was inventing all kinds of never-seen VFX that would blow people away. One of the engineers I worked with told me something I never forgot: "Your imagination has more polygons than anything you can create with our software." He was talking about why it was critical to have some of the action happen in the shadows.

All of this is why series tend to go downhill. The first volume in any series leaves so much to the imagination. The map of the world is barely fleshed out, the characters' biographies are full of blank spots, the mechanics of the artifacts and the politics of the land are all just detailed enough that your mind automatically ascribes a level of detail to them, without knowing what that detail is.

This is the moment at which everything seems very clever, because your mind is just churning with all the different bits of elaborate lore that will fill in those lacunae and make them all fit together.

SPOILER ALERT: I'm about to give some spoilers for Furiosa.

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FURIOSA SPOILERS AHEAD!

Last night, we went to see Furiosa, the latest Mad Max movie, a prequel to 2015's Fury Road, which is one of the greatest movies ever made. Like most prequels, Furiosa functions as a lore-delivery vehicle, and as such, it's nowhere near as good as Fury Road.

Fury Road hints as so much worldbuilding. We learn about the three fortresses of the wasteland (the Citadel, the Bullet Farm, and Gastown) but we only see one (The Citadel). We learn that these three cities have a symbiotic relationship with one another, defined by a complex politics that is just barely stable. We meet Furiosa herself, and learn something of her biography – that she had been stolen from the Green Place, that she had suffered an arm amputation.

All of this is left for us to fill in, and for a decade, my hindbrain has been chewing on all of that, coming up with cool ways it could all fit together. I yearned to know the "real" explanation, but it was always unlikely that this real explanation would be as enjoyable as my own partial, ever-unfinished headcanon.

Furiosa is a great movie, but its worst parts are the canonical lore it settles. Partly, that's because some of that lore is just stupid. Why is the Bullet Farm an open-pit mine? I mean, it's visually amazing, but what does that have to do with making bullets? Sometimes, it's because the lore is banal – the solarpunk Green Place is a million times less cool than I had imagined it. Sometimes, it's because the lore is banal and stupid: the scenes where Furiosa's arm is crushed, then severed, then replaced, are both rushed and quasi-miraculous:

https://www.themarysue.com/how-does-furiosa-lose-her-arm/

But even if the lore had been good – not stupid, not banal – the best they could have hoped for was for the lore to be tidy. If it were surprising, it would seem contrived. A story whose loose ends have been tidily snipped away seems like it would be immensely satisfying, but it's not satisfying – it's just resolved. Like the band performing every encore you demand, until you no longer want to hear the band anymore – the feeling as you leave the hall isn't satisfaction, it's exhaustion.

So long as some key question remains unresolved, you're still wanting more. So long as the map has blank spots, your hindbrain will impute clever and exciting mysteries, tantalyzingly teetering on the edge of explicability, to the story.

Lore is always better as something to anticipate than it is to receive. The fans demand lore, but it should be doled out sparingly. Always leave 'em wanting more.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/27/cmon-do-it-again/#better_to_remain_silent_and_be_thought_a_fool_than_to_speak_and_remove_all_doubt

[pedroam-bang]

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

[humanoidhistory]

Mad Max (1979)

[machetelanding]

Mel Gibson in The Road Warrior (1981)

[vermilllionsands]

Mad Max (1979)

[tygerland]

Mad Max: Black & Chrome 2015

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Mad Max

Art by Matt Lesniewski

[alpaca-clouds]

Imagining a better world after the apocalypse?

Now, there are only few followers here, who know me from twitter, I think. But those who do know, that my hyperfixation fandom before Castlevania (though one without much in terms of fanfiction) was Mad Max: Fury Road. Like, I still fucking adore this batshit movie! The action is awesome. The color grading is amazing. And Charlize Theron is.......... Look, I have exactly one celebrity crush and it is this woman, alright?

But let me get to the point. The point is, that within that fandom I had quite a few discussions about one question: "Is Immortan Joe right with how he runs this place?" (Spoiler: My answer is "no".)

Weird question, given that Immortan Joe is the antagonist of the movie and a pretty shitty dude, who only perceives other people as his property that is supposed to serve him in some way or form.

But here is what those people would argue, who would argue for him actually being right and the end of the movie actually spelling desaster for that post-apocalyptic desert society, he has build: "Well, water, oil and sulfur are rare ressources in this post-apocalypse, so one would need to distribute it carefully. And if Furiosa is to establish a more equal society in the end, there will not be enough to go around. Just look at the water. If you leave it running like that, you would empty the reservoir within a couple of days!"

To which my answer always has been: "Our you could just create a better method of sharing the water with everybody. Like faucets. Instead of letting most of it go to waste on the ground. And you can just... not build an entire military based around gas-guzzeling cars and instead use the big advantage of the citadel that it is self-sufficient and super hard to conquer."

But... I think this argumentation also kinda reveals a certain cynicism people have been trained to use to see the world. We are trained to see the world as a "wolf eat wolf" society. That we need scarcity and that there needs to be an underclass of people.

But of course... This is just wrong. Even that post-apocalyptic society in that movie can actually turn into something nice. Into something better.

Especially as all the argumentation people have going on there, ignores one of the greatest things that the citadel has: Knowledge. There is tons of old knowledge through the books that are still there. Books from the old world. Books in engineering. On other things as well. And adding to that, they also have the oral knowledge of the vuvalini in the end.

And because I cannot help myself to bring this from my last hyperfixation to my current hyperfixation: Take the end of the Castlevania Netflix series, for example. Like, sure, most characters have a happy end. But that is not the hopeful thing about it. Because the series ends on the expressed goal of sharing knowledge. The vampires have collected all this knowledge the entire time. Knowledge of technology and medicine. But they have done basically nothing with it, but making their own living kinda nice. I mean, heck, why do vampires even need knowledge about medicine given that they apparently do not get sick and can heal all wounds within minutes.

And then the series ends on the expressed goal of sharing the knowledge. Isaac gets inspired to share his knowledge by the end of the series - and given that he ends up with access to the Styrian library he can share that knowledge as well. And we already see by the end, how the people from Danesti are both in the Belmont Hold and the library of the castle, are learning things.

You could argue, that what happens in the show is, from the perspective of the average person, the apocalypse. Like, there is literal fire raining down onto the earth. But... By the end of it. There is the potential to build a better world. A world, in fact, that would be better than what actually happened in the real world after 1476.

And I think that is just so darn hopeful.

I wished media would explore this more.

[indra-istari]

Furiosa is a woman you misogynist. Tough women with buzz cuts aren’t men.

Also “queer” is a disgusting, homophobic slur

[plumulesauvage]

Paradise in Hell 3 : The Citadel

Genre : Sf, drama, adventure, psychological

Warnings : rude language, swearing, crude parts, mention of a grown man and a little girl alone in the same room, mentions le the titties of the PeopleEater (this guy is disgustingly, sorry not sorry), Dementus (as always)

Relationships : Furiosa x oc, Dementus x oc, Immortan Joe x oc, Max x oc

Ps : just noted that I described this fic as an x reader when, actually, it’s more an x oc., sorry about that. But if you identify as Valh, then it’s my pleasure.

Chapter 2 here

Table of contents here

Valhalla was raising her eyebrow, as if saying “Told you : he’s a moron”. Looking at her, Furiosa only sighed before looking back at what seemed to be the entrance of the giant rocks overlooking her.

The two girls were sitting in their moving jail, waiting for Dementus to end his speech. The man decided a little sooner that he was gonna take over a green place called The Citadel. And he was currently trying to motivate the ones who lived in it to deliver their chiefs in order for him to take control of the fortress. Unfortunately for him, they apparently weren't disposed to do so.

And then everything went wrong. A "war boy" just threw himself for his lord Immortan Joe, and it soon became chaos. Everybody was fleeing for his own sake, and the warriors of the Citadel were fishing any bike they could. They finally hooked the moving jail, with the History Man, Furiosa and Valhalla inside.

Everyone panicked.

The History Man tried to stand as still as he could. Furiosa was being dragged in some kind of tunnel by creepy humans. And Valhalla, scared, didn't dare to let go of the jail. Dementus rushed over the girls, but he had to make a choice : freeing Furiosa from her kidnappers or helping Valhalla before she got way too high above the ground. And the History Man, who succeeded in getting out of the jail a little sooner, wasn't of great help.

Panicking, the bikers leader finally chose to help Furiosa, who was easier to help than Valhalla. The two little girls were trying to catch each other, screaming in the capharnaum.

"Fury !" Shouted Valhalla, only hanging with one arm attached to a bar, while the other one was outstretched to her sister.

"Valh !" Responded Furiosa, as Dementus was getting her out of trouble. She struggled in the arms of her savior, trying desperately to catch her sister, as she was getting higher and higher.

Finally, Valh understood that it was too late for her. If she jumped, she could hurt herself pretty badly. Plus, if Fury stayed here, there was a high risk that she ended up captured by the war boys. And she didn't want to see the only dear person to her being abducted, again. So, in a final movement of her hand, she waved goodbye to her sister by heart, with tears streaming down her face.

" We made a promise, Fury. Hold it for me..."

" But ! I cannot leave you here Valh !" Was desperately shouting at the second girl.

"May the stars be with you." Ended the first one, looking resigned. She was sad for her sister, she didn't want to let her go with the crazy maniac who killed their mother. But, at the same time, she didn't want her to become one of Immortan Joe's slaves. Instinctively she felt that being with Dementus was safer than in the Citadel.

And so, she gave up the idea of seeing the Green Place or her sister again, resigned but with the relief that Furiosa was safe from this hell of a place.

___

Valhalla was afraid. She didn't know what was gonna happen to her, but it certainly wasn't something fine.

As the war boy pulled the jail up, they caught her without letting her a chance of escaping. And they directly seized her to bring her to their chief. And now, the little girl was quietly and anxiously walking through rock tunnels which seemed never ending.

When she and her "escort" finally arrived at the heart of the Citadel, she was met with very strange and frightening people. The first one was wearing a nose jewel and some rings on his breast. The second was a giant with a creepy way of looking at her, and wore what seemed to be a breathing pipe on his face. The third was dressed as a Roman with a leather skirt and some burns on his skull. The last one, who was probably the chief with such charisma, was an old white hair man with a frightening mask and some white pants.

He - tough Valh - is the most terrifying man I ever saw in my life.

And that was probably true. Dementus was maybe scary because of his unpredictable behavior, but he didn't have this sort of murderous vibe.

Before she could notice, the young girl stopped breathing, fearing the noises she could emit. She was looking at the ground, terrified by all those eyes on her. Men were dangerous. She knew it. But not as she realized it now. If they wanted her dead, she would be dead. No option, no choice. Just their will. And she felt terribly weak. Not because she was a girl, nor because she was a child. But because they were monsters of the worst kind. Not even worth to be called human anymore.

As she was lost in her thoughts, she heard the chief getting up. He was walking toward her. And if she could disappear right now, she would have. What kept her on her legs was the relief of knowing Furiosa wasn't here with her.

The chief suddenly spoke. Short, simple, efficient.

« Bring her to the room. »

No questions. His underlings obeyed, dragging the poor little Valh in a new room, leaving her all alone waiting for what would happen to her. She was scared, thinking of it. She was gonna be alone with the chief of the citadel. No one to hear her cries. And even if somebody did hear her, they wouldn’t intervene because of loyalty or fear.

___

No matter what this man was planning for her. She would come out of this room changed, and not for the best. She knew it. Men didn’t ask, they took what they wanted as if granted. It would be the same. The horror of being a girl in this awful world was striking her right here and now. Who knew what kind of awful pleasures this man had in his safe little rock ?

While the girl was overwhelmed with her thoughts, the leader of the citadel entered the room, closing the door behind him. Shivers took all over the girl’s body. She closed her eyes and stopped breathing. But, as she was waiting for the worst to come, a hand landed on her shoulders.

Just as she opened her eyes, curious of what was going on, she saw the man right in front of her, kneeling. He was looking at her necklace. Staring intensely, as if reminded of something. The two were in an awkward silence.

As if obliged, Valhalla spoke.

“ It belonged to my mother. ” she pointed to the necklace.

The man nodded silently. He finally got up and hummed. Then he looked back at her.

“ Long time ago, before the citadel, I was guiding men in the wastelands. ”

The young girl didn’t care about what he was saying. But she knew that the more he spoke, the less he hurt. So she just listened, faking her interest in his monologue.

“ One day I met a woman. She was a full life, as beautiful as the sun, lost in the desert. Long story short, she accompanied me for years. When I took over the citadel, we argued about hurting people. She was weak by heart and I despised that. ”

How surprising coming from a guy like you. Thought Valhalla, unsure about where the story was going and what it had to do with her.

“ Finally she just disappeared in the desert. She left me and never returned. ”

“ You must ask yourself why I am telling you all of this gibberish story of the past. ”

“ Funny thing is : this woman had a necklace that I offered to her while we were still young and in love. And that was the same as the one you’re currently wearing.”

“ So. My question is : who the fuck are you ? ”

She didn’t know what to say anymore. This man was telling her that he knew a woman with the same necklace as her biological mother ? She didn’t know her much but she knew one thing : they both were Vuvalinis. And one of them would never ever love a guy like this. That was impossible. Surely a mistake. Or worse, a trap to gain information.

He couldn’t be talking about her mother.

“ I'm sorry sir. But I can’t answer you. My biological mother passed away giving birth to me. So, I can’t say that I know her… ”

How to handle this guy without telling him too much ? She didn’t know what to do anymore. Why was this guy talking about a woman she didn’t know ? Couldn’t he just let go of her ?! Plus, he was creepy looking with his mask and she didn’t want to stay in the same room as him. She wanted to go back home. More than ever. And to ask the many mothers a proof that her biological one had nothing to do with this horror of a man.

It was maybe only a coincidence. She learned that jewelry was common before the wars. Maybe two girls had the same necklace and they just ended up in different hands, leading one of them here. What an unfortunate fate !

“ I know what you’re thinking little one. That is not a coincidence. It cannot be since I had one of my men craft it for the woman I loved. ”

Oh shit.

If she didn’t have wanted to eat peaches this day, maybe she would have stay away from this fucker. But it was way too late now…

[filmgifs]

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015) dir. George Miller

[midnight-bass]

Furiosa's The Stowaway

[pedroam-bang]

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

[humanoidhistory]

Publicity still for Mad Max 2, aka The Road Warrior.

[machetelanding]