7000 days = about 19.4 years. According to the comics, Joe gives his wives three chances to give him a male heir with no deformities. Let’s say that Furiosa got tossed in 3 years, and it took her 3-6 years to climb the ranks.
That still leaves a group of maybe 13 year old and younger War Pups who’d only ever known of Furiosa as Imperator.
Nux spoke of Joe like he’d barely ever seen him, or only from a distance, maybe through binoculars. There were two other Imperators near Joe.
What if these other Imperators were as distant and aloof? Are they also black thumbs, or do they simply delegate, or only come out for war?
We know Furiosa probably modified her War Rig herself (see: kill switches and hidden weaponry), which means she HAS to have been in the shop and garages. We know from the film that the War Pups are in the background everywhere. We know there’s no way Furiosa could have been cruel to these children given the systematic way we’re shown her empathy; we also know that there’s a systemic pattern of cruelty, deprivation, and put-downs in the general War Boy culture (’mediocre’, being un-witnessed, witheld water and general human needs, the quick way that Nux blooms under the least bit of kindness).
So think about this generation of War Boys who knows in their hindbrains that the safest place to be (both physically and emotionally) is around their Imperator. Their’s because it’s the Imperator that they see the most, in the shop. The Imperator that Joe trusts on his most dangerous runs. The Imperator that is spoken of by older War Boys like Slit with fear and awe.
Is it any wonder the way they say her name?
furiosa: den mother of the apocalypse
you know, considering that, her takeover isn’t so much a coup as a natural succession. she’s the highest ranked warrior with loyal followers.
And it didn’t even occur to her. She didn’t even want it. Didn’t realize that if she went back to the Citadel that her face would be enough.
And even more: Max realized. Went out first so that everyone else were safe, and somehow knew that they needed to see her. (Though maybe it was one of the others? Or at least, he agreed enough to implement it.)
This post has been going around again and I feel the need to give a caveat that I tried writing the language in the original post very carefully. In no way do I think that Furiosa was actively nurturing or performing traditional motherly roles, there’d be no room and no safe space for it in the toxic environment of the Citadel.
However, I do think she was probably the least bad thing in a very bad situation, and that she’d be fair if you give her fairness. The War pups would be in no position to harm her; and if they deal with her honestly, I don’t see her giving them any less credit and responsibility and fairness and thanks than she did for Max.
The way that she got Max to stand down and to help her out willingly, even gladly? Other meta have pointed out that its a skill, and like most skills have been honed. (She treated him like he had trauma, and gave him things to do to be useful, and responsible.) And I wouldn’t be surprised if she used these same skills on the War pups as well as she did her own crew.
The comment continues in typical mansplaining manner but I want to address this first bit specifically. Because the assumption that the women are framed that way because it’s an action shot is wrong from a technical standpoint.
There is a difference between Wanda gesturing with her hands almost having no space for her head in a composition that highlighted her breasts …
…and the way Tony is given ‘headroom’ while gesturing with his hands (see: any Iron Man Trailer). He still has his face prominent at the sweet spot of the Golden Ratio (for more discussion on what/where this is scroll down to the diagrams), his hands are on the other sweet spot, and it’s a very dynamic pose with great use of diagonals both foreground and background.
There is also a difference between Natasha almost having to bend her head so that her face stays on the screen while her chest and hips land in the sweet spots…
And the headspace that is given Thor. Thor’s face lands on upper Third (Rule of Thirds). They are both holding/threatening with weapons.
But wait! you say, what if we want to emphasize the weapons?
Yeah there’s a way to do that too, without sexualizing your character and smashing their head almost off the frame…
I enjoyed Age of Ultron, but these are some very excellent points. Also, am I wrong in thinking that in Iron Man 2, when Natasha is going down that hallway, beating the crap out of the guys in it, that a lot of the focus is more on her face? Not entirely, but more than it is here? Oh…
oh.
I just looked it up (thanks Tumblr for the the new gif feature!)
….my eye goes to her face but also her boobs. It’s hard for me to analyze in a moving gif though why hat is, other than the top with a great big triangle of flesh screaming LOOK DOWN. (the coloring may or may not be altered in this gif, too, like an upped contrast that is aiding that, idk)
She’s also more off-center than I realized in this shot. It’s like this technique is so common I can’t even see it unless I’m looking for it o_O
The term you’re looking for here is diagonal composition. Where are the diagonals pointing?
Look again at the background spaces behind Thor and Tony, the arches are pointing at Thor’s face and the architecture is pointing at the repulsor. Now go look at what the edges of the building is doing for Wanda and Natasha.
Im on mobile and on a break, but Google “diagonal composition in photography” if you want to look into the effects of diagonals more. It’s a bit more advanced than golden rule framing but not by much. (Though I would hesitate to do composition analysis on that shot off a cropped gif, you still can’t get away from the diagonals.)
Ooh thank you! That actually makes total sense to me, because I’ve worked in picture framing before, and a lot of that is about: “are you bringing the eye in, or out? What are you drawing the eye towards, if you are drawing it in or out?” (because you don’t want to draw the eye towards the frame, usually – you want to draw it towards the picture or objects, or a specific part or aspect of the picture or objects). Though in the case of picture framing it’s usually more simple, in that it’s more on an actual outline or series of asymmetrical outlines it still serves the same function: to point the eye towards what’s in the “center”. So now that you’ve pointed that out, I can see it at work. :)
This also makes me suddenly realize that the reason they make so many female characters’ tops zip down is…even MORE male gazey than I thought >_> “hey look, my clothing is not only showing actual boobflesh, it’s also pointing towards my waist and hips and crotch!”
Getting off my ass and finally posting these because I’d finally gotten a free picture editor that did what I wanted it to. All AOU caps come from the main trailer, The IM2 screencap comes from one of the trailers.
(the rest of the discussion including how some of the most potentially objectifying moments in Fury Road is subverted by composition/blocking/lighting)
but seriously though i’m sick and tired of those masterposts that are like “here! A reference site on Greek mythology for all your needs! Look it has all fifteen Greek gods on it!” And I’m like. tHERE WERE LIKE HUNDREDS OF FIGURES IN MYTHOLOGY YOUR CRAPPY HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL BIBLIOGRAPHY SITE MEANS NOTHING TO ME
if you want a basic outline of Greek mythology okay sure fine??? but like. if you want an extensive fucking reference site you are looking in the wrong goddamn places
as a self-declared greek mythology snob my reference site is fucking alwaysthis fucker right here. almost every single figure ever mentioned in a Greek text is on it, it has the most obscure gods, spirits, nymphs— it’s GREAT. You really wanna extend your mythological knowledge past the basic 12 and like four others? USE THEOI. plus plus PLUS everything is cited so you can actually read the source material written about whoever it is you’re looking at.
fucking signal boost this. i’m so sick and tired of writer’s helpers blogs referring people to sites with as much information you would get from opening a third grade mythology book jesus chriiiiiist
can we just talk about the time that Lupin was recovering from a full moon and Snape taught the DADA class and made all the students write essays on how to kill werewolves for Lupin to read when he got back I hate Snape so much it’s not funny
Lupin gets back and he feels like crap and suddenly his best friend’s son is writing an essay about how to kill him like that is so fucked up
Bear in mind that an ex-Death Eater does this tosomeone who was in the Order, risked his life fighting against said Death Eaters and lost his best friends to the Death Eater’s genocidal leader, for the sole purpose of screwing him over, and as far as we know he experiences no consequences whatsoever for doing so.
And if that wasn’t enough, he made them write those essays hoping some of them would realize Lupin’s a werewolf. And one did, but Hermione is a fucking DECENT HUMAN BEING and said nothing. Apparently the ‘insufferable know-it-all' can keep her mouth closed, when it’s for something important. Just like Snape didn’t do at the end of the book.
I’m getting mad, so here’s something I’ve realized while reading The Order of the Phoenix again. (Please keep in mind that my books are in Italian and some concepts might be hard to explain, I apologize for my English mistakes)
In chapter 14, when The Trio talked with Sirius, he said that two years before Dolores Umbridge had written a law against werewolves that made it almost impossible for Lupin to find a job.
Now ask yourself this question. Why two years?
What had happened two years before? During Harry’s third year? Oh, right. The Magical World had discovered that one of Hogwarts’ teachers (someone who was in constant conctat with their children) was a werewolf. Does that ring any bell?
But that’s not all! If we take a look at chapter 15, in the Daily Prophet article we can see a familiar name: Remus Lupin.
In a newspaper. Where everyone can read it. “The werewolf Remus Lupin”. No wonder he couldn’t find a job! And it’s not the first time the Daily Prophet has written about him, as it’s stated in the article itself. There must have been a huge scandal when it had all come out.
So basically, when Snape decided he couldn’t bear not having what he wanted (for example, SIRIUS BLACK GETTING KISSED BY A DEMENTOR) and spilled the secret, he didn’t only tell the whole school. He didn’t only tell the kids’ parents. The told the whole Magical World.
He told the whole Magical World that a man who had kept his condition secret all his life was a werewolf.
And the Magical World responded with a law against werewolves.
So, basically, Snape didn’t only ruin Remus Lupin’s life. He ruined the life of every single werewolf in the UK.
if you identify as cis but haven’t actually taken time to sit down and examine and analyze your gender identity, it’s probably time to do that otherwise you’ve just given in to society forcing a significant part of your identity upon you.
if someones comfortable with their gender identity to the point that its not even on their mind then theres no need for them to analyse it
as someone who basically identifies as cis i think it’s very much important to examine your gender identity. it might lead to small things: e.g. after i did that i stopped shaving because i realized that i wasn’t doing it for myself. further, i’ve stopped seeing my own face as a gendered thing and this makes it easier for me to be respectful of the identities of others, and easier to be happy with the meatsack i live in. i think that it’s very important for cis people to consider what aspects of gendered existence we hold sacred. peeing in a segregated space? if so, why? i mean this is exactly the kind of question trans communities have been trying to get us to deal with forever and i think that answering it on a cultural level will come with exactly the type of introspection that OP is asking for.
some of the best advice i’ve got in college so far is “make strange what is comfortable” and hey, after you take it apart, you can put it right back together again if that’s what makes you happy but it’s still important to evaluate why you perform your gender the way you do and what rituals are essential to that? why are they essential? are they worth perpetuating? the answer might not always be yes EVEN for people comfortable with the label of their gender assigned at birth
HELP I ACCIDENTALLY STARTED A PRESIDENTIAL CONSPIRACY
I MADE THIS WEBSITE LIKE 6 YEARS AGO ITS FAKE
EVERYTHING ON IT IS FAKE
I MADE IT ALL UP
AND NOW???????
I DID THIS????? THIS VERIFIED FB WOMAN WANTED TO BELIEVE JAMES BUCHANAN THE 15TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES REALLY RAISED PYGMY GOATS IN THE WHITE HOUSE ROSE GARDEN??????
AND NOW??????????
SOMEONE HAS PUBLISHED IT?????????????????????? IT COSTS REAL MONEY???????????? NONE OF THE FACTS ARE REAL SOMEONE HELP ME
someone made a prezi
someone informed a classroom that James Buchanan was first choice over Sacagawea
I know it’s so bad like how did this happen I just cannot believe
All I can say is that I couldn’t ask for a better representation of the American education system tbh
Okay but like…Gail Collins is not just a “verified Facebook woman”. She’s a columnist for the New York Times.
Since it’s been a while, I decided to take some fresh pics the other day and relive the magic to show off how far I’ve come!
See this scruffy person here?
Boring, boring, boring. Nice sweater, though.
But there is a secret.
The secret is FUCKING SORCERY
BAM.PRESTIDIGIFOUNDATION!
WITH JUST A LITTLE EFFORT, YOU TOO CAN PRESENT AS ANY GENDER YOU NEED TO BE.
DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU OTHERWISE. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, AND THEY CAN SUCK A DUCK.
Remember how I said it had been a few years since I made the older post? Back then I wasn’t out in public, just to my closest friends and family. When that post exploded, I was afraid of backlash. But aside from a few shitheads, the response was overwhelmingly positive. It eventually gave me the strength to come out as trans publicly, and the support from people I care about was amazing. It’s not for everyone, but it was definitely the best thing I’ve done recently for my mental health.
Seriously though, all of you deserve to be happy, and part of being happy is the freedom to be who you are. So if you’re in the closet about your identity, or If you ever feel like no one is in your corner, remember I’m rooting for you. I want you to be happy.
I love you all, you little cuties. Each and every one of you. So go out there and kick the world’s ass~
If you have the time could you please reblog this? I hate asking for reblogs, but I want this to reach those who need it. I know there are people out there that feel invisible, and I want to show them that they aren’t, and that you don’t age out of being nonbinary.
Me, internally:
everyone has forgotten, but I haven't. I haven't forgotten uptown funk. I can't hear those words without getting an unexplainable urge to say 'hot damn.' Maybe nobody forgot. Maybe we all think this. I feel like we need to talk about the influence this song had on all of us.
I’ve noticed this revisionist Greek myth is common wherein Persephone loves Hades and eats the pomegranate seeds in order to evade her overbearing mother, and that’s all well and good. You know, sometimes I’m in the mood for it and sometimes I’m not. But hear this: as long as we’re doing this, why is no one wondering whether Aphrodite might really love Hephaestus?
Think about it. All the gods in their immortal splendor are lining up to marry her, doing everything in their power to impress her, the goddess of love and beauty, and she choses…that guy. A god in technical terms only, a social reject who’s ugly and malformed and um, no fun. Always slaving away in his workshop when everyone else is quaffing nectar and having their eternal beach party up on Mount Olympus. They can’t believe she’d give up all of them for that.
So, because the gods do not take rejection well (looking at you Apollo), eventually they start to say to each other, well, we all know Zeus made her do it anyway. He’s gotta feel guilty for throwing Hephaestus off Mount Olympus that one time. And it quickly becomes thatpoorgirl, stuck in that workshop full of sweat and dirt and cyclopses when she could have had one of us. Because of course they’ve got love all figured out; it’s entirely technical and dependent on who’s the most charming and good-looking and not at all variable and strange and notoriously unpredictable, right?
Meanwhile Ares, only the most arrogant and brainless of the crew, can’t take a hint and is still showing up wherever Aphrodite goes trying to hit on her, so eventually she and Hephaestus decide to rig up an elaborate mechanical trap for him, using her as bait. When all the gods have laughed at him for getting caught he huffily attempts to regain his dignity by telling them, whatever, guys, you want to know the truth, I was meeting her for an assignation. And they all kind of know he’s full of it but they just accept it as the unvarnished truth from thereon in, because they’d love to believe she’d cheat on Hephaestus with Ares. They’d love it. Come on, Aphrodite, get off your high horse and admit you’re just as shallow as the rest of us.
So they talk, but Aphrodite doesn’t really care about their collective jealousy because she dotes on her misshapen genius of a husband with his sooty hands and his sweaty brow who always takes her seriously and is always so hard at work inventing astonishing new things to make her happy, and she loves the volcano they live in with its internal pressures so conducive to the formation of precious stones and its passages lit with glowing lava that so gorgeously offsets her cheekbones, and all the cyclopses worship her because even with one eye apiece they’ve still got more depth perception than most men do where she’s concerned. True it is that as a couple the two develop a reputation for not getting out much, because all those Olympian parties bore them to death and they’d rather spend time with each other (poor Aphrodite, she’s such a vivacious young thing and her husband is so grasping and insecure that he won’t let her go out and have fun), but they do all right.
THIS IS THE KIND OF CONTENT I’M LOOKING FOR
love <3
Ok, ok, wait, but it doesn’t end there. Because Aphrodite features pretty heavily in the story of Eros and Psyche. She’s painted as the villain, her jealousy causing her to send her son to curse the girl, but that’s just not true. She knows what it’s like to be clamored over for your beauty, knows the lies that are spread, the way it sets you up as a target and discredits your mind. Aphrodite hears the mortals whisper that this human girl rivals her in beauty, and one day she gets around to seeing what the fuss is about.
She finds Psyche’s home all but besieged by suitors, but she notices the girl isn’t falling for their flattery, that she is still kind, no matter who she’s dealing with. She sees a bit of herself in this girl who aches to be spoken to, not at, and who wants most of all to be heard.
When she sends her son to the girl, she is less than truthful about her motivations. She knows if she tells him she hopes he will fall for this mortal girl it will make things awkward for him, that true love must be discovered on its own and cannot be forced. When he comes away from the encounter with her name on his lips, searching for excuses to talk to her again, Aphrodite whispers into the soothsayer’s ear to tell Psyche’s father that she is loved by a god. Frees her from the hoards of shallow admirers and gives her son the opportunity he needs to see her again.
When a year of late-night conversations fails to convince her son that it’s time to reveal himself to his beloved, she puts a bug in Psysche’s ear to ask for her sisters to visit, whispers in their ears to convince Psyche to take matters into her own hands, ensures the two can finally meet face to face. She is saddened when Eros flees, believing Psyche had betrayed him.
The four tasks Psyche must overcome to be reunited with her son aren’t laid forth out of spite, but rather to help the girl find herself. Aphrodite knows this girl hasn’t had a choice in the path her life has taken up until this point. Knows that everything was in the hands of her father, and of Aphrodite herself. She wants to make sure Psyche means it, wants Psyche to know what she’s getting into when dealing with the Olympians. Wants, most of all, for Psyche to question her own motivations, fully evaluate the situation, and then make her own choice.
Her frustration at the Olympians aiding the girl isn’t because she hates being tricked. No, she wants Psyche to break out of her shell, wants her to have the option to decide this isn’t worth it and walk away.
When the final task ends in Psyche laying unconscious on the roadway, Aphrodite searches the girl’s heart and knows her intentions are true. Knows she is ready to join the family. She kicks Eros out of the house to ensure he would find Psyche, to ensure he would come to his senses and forgive her, realize that he had been unfair to her and to ask her forgiveness in turn.
They say Aphrodite was sour about the whole ordeal until her granddaughter was born, but the truth was she hadn’t stopped smiling from the moment her son had first come home, whispering the girls name in reverence.
With Windows 10, Microsoft has made their family account settings more visible and easier to access than ever before. These settings have been available since Vista (requiring separate downloads in Vista and 7, natively available in 8), but somewhat more obscure and not as feature-rich as they are now, and, for the most part? These are really smart, fantastic tools for parents, including things like screen time limitations, web and application filters, and prepaid balances for a child’s Xbox/Microsoft account to allow them to make purchases without having unfettered access to their parent’s credit or debit card.
Unfortunately, the family settings also include (and, again, have always included) activity/web reporting, and there is a very justified concern that this kind of reporting could lead to the careless (and dangerous) outing of LGBTQIA kids to bigoted parents.
To be honest, the way this information was presented made it sound somewhat Orwellian in scope, so I decided that I would investigate by setting up an old throwaway Live account I made to share pictures of my daughter with family as a child account.
Most of the administration is done through the web interface at account.live.com, under the family tab. Once you click through to the child’s account, this is the first screen you see, exactly as it appears on a new child account:
As you can see, both Activity Reporting and emailed reports are enabled by default. Parents have to intentionally turn these features off if they are using a child account.
Somewhat more surprising, web filtering (under the web browsing tab) is NOT turned on by default. I went ahead and enabled it for my tests to see what was allowed and blocked by default (whitelisting and blacklisting sites is very easy).
For some strange reason, my child account would not allow me to take screenshots, but I captured screens with my phone.
This notification greets child accounts EVERY TIME THEY LOG IN, which immediately made me feel better about what MS is doing (more editorializing in a bit). Any time a child logs in to their account, they know if they are being watched, which is a big deal.
Next, I decided to do some testing of blocked and reported content. The parent account had already installed Chrome and Firefox, so I loaded up all three browsers and tried visiting various webpages.
Major news sites largely loaded with no issue, and visits to most of the common gaming sites were no trouble. Strangely enough, Kotaku must have been flagged as having potentially objectionable content, because I got this screen when I tried to visit:
Other sites that were more likely to be outright blocked, such as Reddit, did not return any error at all - they simply did not load. Google.com also did not load (I presume this is because because Microsoft can’t force Google to load only “safe search” results), though Google accounts loaded just fine, as did Google ad services.
Because I wanted to get a good idea of what the parental controls were and were not capable of, I tried to go into InPrivate/Incognito mode in all three browsers. The keyboard shortcuts were disabled, and any options to open new windows in these private modes were simply missing. I didn’t expect so simple a workaround as using a different browser to work, but it’s always worth checking for the basic vulnerabilities in a system first.
Next, I tried to download and install the IPVanish VPN client. I did not actually try to visit any websites with it active, because installation AND program use both require admin privileges, which the child account does not have, so a child wanting to use a VPN would have to either know their parent’s password (in which case these family settings could be bypassed anyway) or have their parents supply the password every time they logged in. Even if the VPN hides their activity, the necessity for parental involvement makes it worthless as a tool to avoid parental invasions of privacy.
Finally, I tried a few web-based proxies (specifically: hide.me and proxfree). Bing will happily search up free proxies for restricted accounts, and using the proxies, I sailed right through to previously inaccessible sites with ease. Kotaku and reddit both loaded right up.
PARENTAL RESULTS
With a nice browsing history worked up, I logged back in to my parental account to see what my snooping eyes could see and found out something interesting: parental accounts do NOT get real-time web reports. All night long, my parental account had a blank screen for web history. The next morning, it had populated the previous day’s activity. This means that parents can’t just sit and monitor a child in real time, so no “catching them in the act.”
The following morning, the parental account had a full history
You’ll notice that it shows attempts to visit questionable websites that require permission, but it does NOT show attempts to visit sites that it simply refused to load, like reddit. You’ll also notice that in the right-hand bar, there are “block” and “allow” buttons that enable instant white and blacklisting.
Here, you see that the hide.me visits are reported. The good news is that, since this reports shows EVERYTHING, including EVERY SINGLE AD AFFILIATE, a parent who doesn’t know what they’re looking for could very easily miss this proxy in the noise. Parents who DO know what they’re looking for, though? Chances are good they’ll see the proxy visits if they take the time to actually sift through the entire report.
Each root site listed can be expanded into a more detailed view. Fortunately, hide.me was as good as its word. Here is the detailed view from those 4 visits:
Parents can block proxies as a child uses them, but there are a LOT of proxies out there, so that is a Sisyphean task, at best.
Another important thing to note is that, while unique URLs visited are reported, a child’s search history on Bing is kept private.
Past the web history, these are the other stats collected on a child account:
There is no explicit data given to parents here (no screencaps or DVRed activity), but parents can easily block apps their children should not be using, and the screen time limit is a very good tool for younger children.
Tim’s Theory:
Once I saw that Microsoft warns child accounts at every single login that they are being watched, I started developing a theory:
Microsoft understands the privacy concern of spying on kids, and they’re trying to get in front of it and give kids the power to protect themselves where they might not otherwise have it.
There have been tools to allow parents to spy on their kids for as long as there has been internet access for parents to spy on. A lot of these tools are just prettied up versions of spyware that you would never, ever want on your computer, but a parent who is determined to spy on their kid usually doesn’t care.
By integrating parental controls that include spying by default, Microsoft can give parents a “safe” monitor while also warning kids that they are being watched. This means the computer and its users are safer (no keylogging, screencapturing, or camera hijacking for third parties to gain back-door access to), a child’s privacy is safer (passwords, even for logging in to the computer, are not revealed to a parent).
By not turning on web filtering by default, MS may be trying to subtly suggest that, rather than blocking your kids, you should be talking to them.
By not blocking even well-known proxy servers when web filtering is turned on, MS is giving kids an escape route from watchful eyes.
I would be far more comfortable if the spying were not turned on by default, but I feel like MS turns it on by default (and makes it sit right at the top of the page in the family controls) to make parents think about what they’re doing to their child’s privacy.
Everyone has to learn how to protect their privacy online, and, unfortunately, that includes kids. There are ways to be smart about “forbidden” websites. Kids at risk of having secrets exposed to their parents need to be made aware of how to be safe.
The biggest and best advice to keep yourself safe when being watched? Do a LOT of “not secret” browsing. Flood that report with “normal” websites, and keep your proxy visits to a minimum. Make it look like noise in the report. When you are on the proxy for something, make sure you go to a non-proxy tab every so often and click through to a new thing.
Also, don’t use just one proxy. Make yourself a list of proxies. Here are a few to start with:
Valkyrie can’t be sure that this hasn’t been happening for days, weeks, perhaps even months. After all, one day amongst the shifting sands of the dunes is much like the one that came before and the one that follows. At some point however, she realises that the sensation of those few seconds where she loses the power to move…act…decide…is familiar. And at some point when she wakes because the first light of dawn is creeping beneath the edge of her blanket she knows that sensation was only a few instants earlier.
She starts to notice things. A particularly fine, meaty lizard that she kills with a dart appears at around the same time each day. She starts to observe more closely. A distinctive cloud is in the sky each time she pushes back the blanket in the morning.
She never knows when the blackness will overtake her though. Most days it comes later and later, although nothing Valkyrie does or doesn’t do seems to affect it.
The first time she makes it to dusk seems significant. The night is falling. Surely if she gets through the night, when she wakes it will be a new and different morning. But the stars are scarcely visible against the night sky before the familiar pull exerts itself on her again and she resets once more.
She begins to reach the night most days. Sometimes she even finishes her watch before Smithy relieves her and sends her to take her turn sleeping. But still she wakes and it is the same morning.
For a while she tries to stay awake during the night, but all that changes is the fact that she is aware of the moment when she is pulled back.
At last there comes a morning when she wakes and the cloud is not there and the only lizard she sees is a runty thing that is scarcely worth the effort of chewing. And it is most definitely a different day. They haven’t seen a dust plume in the distance for weeks says Keeper, although Valkyrie is quite sure that for her (at least) it has been more days than that.
Her bike is hidden behind the dunes. Her clanswomen lie in wait. And Valkyrie climbs the pylon to bait their trap. The dust suggests something bigger than a motorbike and that would be a rich prize for the Vuvalini, especially if it’s not running on fumes.
She screams her lament and pleads for help, and cannot believe her ears when she hears the words recited by the figure who steps down from the truck.
Valkyrie calls her tribe. She slides, she shrugs into her wrap, and stumbles across the sand in disbelief towards her Furiosa.
Another night passes, and they turn back but it’s still a new day. There’s another night, another morning, and still no slice that disconnects Valkyrie from the progression of time. Things have changed.
Then Valkyrie finds out what anchors her to the loop. She watches the War Rig overrun by Warboys and Polecats faster than she can reload and when she sees the headshot that claims Furiosa her two thoughts as she is yanked backwards once more is that at least it was quick and now she knows what if not why.
At least that gives her a strategy she thinks. The days when she sees the cloud, kills the lizard, goes to sleep, and waits for a plume of dust that never comes only to wake again are agony. But some days are good and the truck rolls to a stop at the bottom of the dunes.
The look of fragile hope on Furiosa’s face is the same every time, and Valkyrie can feel that the hand threading through the thickness of her hair is doing it for the first time. She tries to run faster than the bikes, to get to Furiosa, to tell her that she knows her, to end the doubt even one second earlier.
Then she tries to work out what she needs to do to stop it repeating.
Sometimes they get close to the canyon before Joe stops them and Furiosa’s life ends along with Valkyrie’s temporality. Sometimes they’re not even within sight of it when the Gigahorse becomes their main obstacle and Furiosa dies when she tries to remove it from their path.
Valkyrie realises that the two are connected. Furiosa needs to live. Furiosa also needs to kill Joe.
Keeping Furiosa alive, keeping the nameless fool alive to keep Furiosa alive, is Valkyrie’s new focus. It still doesn’t work. She tries every position on the Rig. Takes out every person who hurt either of them on a previous iteration. And still the cycle repeats.
Finally she disagrees as they plan their run. She needs to be on a bike, be mobile, take out threats unexpectedly. Furiosa argues against it. She explains how motorbikes are good for a few hits but are the preserve of War Boys reaching their half-lives because they rarely make it back. Valkyrie insists.
It seems like Furiosa was right when Maadi takes a harpoon to the face and they topple to the ground. Valkyrie takes aim at the Gigahorse and watches four shots fair and true leave mere cracks in the glass. As the monstrous vehicle passes over her, she jumps to her feet and keeps firing.
Valkyrie isn’t stupid. She knows there is an entire War Party coming up behind her, but she keeps firing at Joe’s car. The last thing she remembers is one of the Imperators on the back falling to her rifle as she keeps firing. She hopes it’s enough.
The next morning is a new day, but Valkyrie doesn’t wake to see it.
