Oh my god THAT’s why she’s willing to sacrifice her crew, because she’s tried any variation of telling them, of asking their help, and there’s always somehow a weak link, they’re not good at secrets, at acting. They don’t even come away from the Citadel, or her crew is suddenly replaced by Joe, or she’s taken off the War Rig, or– In desperation she tries not telling them one time, and it’s gut-wrenching, but then she gets much further, and now she has to get them killed over and over again, punch Ace off of her running board like he’s one of the Wretched over and over again–
She only ever reaches the other Vuvalini once, on their final run, which is why it was so crushing when she found out that there were only a few left, and that her home was gone. The run through we saw was the furthest she ever got, after hundreds of times watching her crew and the sisters die in different ways. Maybe she even killed Max many times before, or left him to die in the desert.
What. Make him stay?? That would probably make him run faster, especially given the ‘I just known you for three days’ thing and ‘who is this wierdo’ and ‘wtf is there about me to like, they’re clearly looking for something’ and ‘what the hell kind of person even says those things’, and y’know, instant escalation of doubt and distrust.
But what if more things happened in one of those runs than just what we saw. Is what I’m getting at.
But wait…what if the new loop doesn’t restart with him offering her his hand on the Plains of Silence? What if it starts with “can I talk to you?”
That means she’s had endless versions of this conversation. That little half-smile she has on her face when he says “I’ll make my own way” is because she already knows he’s going to say that. Because he says that every time.
Maybe she learns that if she’s too honest about wanting him to stay, it scares him off and he doesn’t come back the next morning. In some of those versions, they ride across the salt until they run out of food and water. In others, someone figures out they have to go back–maybe Furiosa figures it out herself, or Val suggests it, or Toast does, or Nux and Capable have been talking on the back of their bike and come up with the idea. But it never works without him there.
Then, one time, almost by chance, she says the right thing and he catches up to them the next morning, and they get much further, and she realizes, oh. She can never make him stay, but if she’s cautious and lucky, he’ll figure it out himself and come back to her. It’s still a hard day, a really hard day, and she does it hundreds of times over, and she always dies, but slowly she learns all the other pieces that have to fall in place.
She doesn’t realize until the last time through that the reason he needs to be there is not as an extra fighter, although that helps, but so he can give her his blood and keep her alive to reach the Citadel. Because the part at the Citadel never works without her.
And she still can’t make him stay.
….I hate all of you.
And every so often, she says/doesn’t say just the right thing under the blazing stars in the safe shadow of the war rig. And he does come with them, even though he knows it’s probably fatal; he’s given up hoping for any other outcome than death, and he’s okay with that - in the company of these people he’s okay with letting go of hope.
So gradually - as they ride for days across the glaring salt, spend nights cold under the thousands of cold stars - his guard comes down. And gradually - in quiet minimal conversations over water-breaks in the desert, watching meteors leaning back on the sand - she gets to know him. She gets the opportunity to value him for himself, not just for his abilities or his strength or his damage. And day by day she gets to see him heal, just a little, in the quiet companionship of everyone around him.
And then they run out of water.
And she’s standing behind him, as he tucks away his map, in the sheltering dark of the war rig, carefully crafting the words she’ll say this time. This is the moment, this is the fulcrum, this must be where she can change the outcome to life rather than drying to husks in the desert sun…but words that make him stay end in that outcome, words that make him come with them end in that outcome; and she doesn’t know, she can’t imagine what this fulcrum moment hold within it that will bend their destinies to some future without endless circling back through death to past-life to death again.
And this time, in her despair, she doesn’t bother bargaining with him or needling him or soothing him or gentling him or any other other strategies she has tried over the cycles. And when he chases them down over the hot salt…he has a plan.
And this is utterly new.
god damn you
There’s one version–
There’s one loop. A loop where he leaves with them across the salt.
They keep to their course, and they get to know each other, and they
save their water and their fuel and they balance it, speed before they
run out of water and steady before they run out of fuel. They gentle to
each other, and he speaks more and she touches more and Valkyrie holds
them together when she can’t, and they manage it. They reach a new green
place.
The cliffs are high, and they have to keep going around, until they
find a place where they can go up onto the green. There is a weathered
sign saying ‘Tapotupotu camping place’
There’s sweet water and green and they cry like they didn’t know
their bodies still could. They have made it. They set up camp on the
bank of the stream and can’t comprehend their fortune. It takes a long
time to fall asleep that night, she, Max and Valkyrie curled around each
other.
When the loop resets and it’s dark and desert and Furiosa feels
herself form the words ‘Can I talk to you?’ she holds them back. Walks
into the desert instead and screams at the sky for the next three loops.
*flings self on the sand*
*screams*
why? whyyyyyyy did it reset? were they all bitten by vipers or something? was there a flash-flood? whyyyyyy?
this fucking fic man…
[I’m sticking this here, cause it originated in my tags but could be the set-up for that AO3 entry someone (cough I’m lookin’ at you primarybufferpanel & bonehandledknife :D) could will compile:
I’m really loving all the different options for where/for whom the cycles happen. I like to imagine they ALL happen - maybe sequentially, maybe simultaneously - they ALL happen and repeat and repeat….until they converge on the life outcome, and all the cycles cease.
This whole fic contains within it no contradictions in that case - it ALL HAPPENS.]
It reset because what breaks the loop isn’t them all surviving; it’s overthrowing Joe’s reign.
Which means the convergence of all the cycles that finally breaks the loop is not the same combination as “everyone lives.” Maybe it’s impossible to have both.
Oh THAT - now that is PERFECT.
Max says it himself: if you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane (..with having to relive things over and over..)
I randomly want to see groundhog day fic in Fury Road but have no idea what that would even look like.
I’ve been following this thread with great fascination! I started thinking about what would happen if the loops begin much earlier and only happen when specific conditions are met, and realized it starts resolving backstory questions in interesting ways. Here is an opening bit:
____________________
The first time Furiosa runs away from the Citadel is seven days after her mother dies. She doesn’t have any time to prepare, she just sees her chance, kicks a war boy in the crotch, and fangs it for the horizon. On foot, no water, no weapons. She sprints through the crowds of the wretched, faster than the war boy, trying to plan. She has no supplies. Even if she can outrun them, she can’t survive in the desert without a few tools.
She trips over a wretched woman and they both go sprawling, and the answer presents itself - the woman has a knife tucked into her belt. She grabs it, jumps up, and runs on, ignoring the woman’s yell. The wretched have very little - she may have just taken a survival tool that meant as much to that woman as it now does to her. She doesn’t let herself think about it.
She takes an empty water bladder from another wretched. Furiosa knows how to collect water in the desert from dew or from plants, all Vuvalini do, it’s slow but she can do it. She runs into the desert until she hears motorbikes - the war boy and friends, coming to find her. She scrapes frantically at the side of a dune and curls up where the wind will pile more sand against her, and it works. They go past her.
That afternoon, a storm blows in. With no water supply and no shelter, she does not expect to survive it. I’m coming to find you, Mother. She thinks as the dark sand closes in and her world shrinks down to her body, her knife, and the water bladder. She’s not sure if it’s sleep or death that takes her.
She wakes up in the breeder’s pens in the Citadel. She blinks, confused, and then shakes her head vigorously. Hell of a dream, Fury.
The day plays out exactly like her dream, as best she can remember. The same war boy - she remembers the motorcycle chain carved into his skin - takes her from the breeder’s pen and past an open staircase that leads down. She can smell fresh air coming up it, and she almost kicks him again.
She doesn’t. Her mother’s last words were that she would protect her, even after death, and Furiosa isn’t going to disregard her warnings. The war boy takes her on to the healer, a man with a shock of white hair who laughs at his own jokes and looks between her legs. No-one’s looked there since she was old enough to bathe herself. She bites her lip and reminds herself to wait. The storm hits the Citadel that afternoon.
If you change your URL with the new tumblr update(that happened September 2015) be aware that any post you made as the old URL will stay as the old URL on all old reblogs and not automatically change to your new URL. For example, if you post a gif as ilovechocolate and change your URL to ilovevanilla… that gif’s username will stay ilovechocolate on all the reblogs done before the URL change, which means if they want to find that gif maker… they can’t just click on the URL because it will bring you to the blog ilovechocolate and not your new one ilovevanilla
So…. that means if someone changes their URL and doesn’t save the old one and someone takes your old one… all the reblogs of your original posts done before your URL change are gonna link to that person’s blog and look like they posted it
Oh my god THAT’s why she’s willing to sacrifice her crew, because she’s tried any variation of telling them, of asking their help, and there’s always somehow a weak link, they’re not good at secrets, at acting. They don’t even come away from the Citadel, or her crew is suddenly replaced by Joe, or she’s taken off the War Rig, or– In desperation she tries not telling them one time, and it’s gut-wrenching, but then she gets much further, and now she has to get them killed over and over again, punch Ace off of her running board like he’s one of the Wretched over and over again–
Oh god it got better worse.
This time isn’t the first time she’s encountered the Fool, although he often doesn’t show up. The life of a bloodbag, well - “life” is the issue, isn’t it? He only started appearing after she got out of the Citadel, and at first she hadn’t paid attention, so she doesn’t really know how her choices affect his survival but she knows it’s not good. Unlike everyone else in this infinite Hell (but at least she’s doing something, at least these three thousand days have been each different, each unlike the previous three thousand - and when she says “plus the ones I don’t remember” it is hard to know if she means the blur of this endless day merging into itself or the blur of the thousands of days before, each sameness so like the previous that she forgets, she forgets) - unlike everyone else, the Fool is unpredictable.
Imagine a villain getting injured and losing their memory and the heroes finding them and taking them with them and taking care of them and the villain gets their memory back after like a week but doesn’t want to say anything because the heroes are being so nice to them and nobody has been that nice to them in so long and they don’t want it to end and they’re maybe getting fond of the heroes but don’t tell anyone shhh. But eventually something happens and the heroes are in trouble and they’re trying to get the villain to run away because they still think they’re an amnesiac with no idea how to defend themself and they’ve grown to like them and don’t want them to get hurt but the villain just pushes past them toward whatever is trying to hurt the heroes and just fuckin goes guns blazing and destroys them
"A Roman man went to see Cicero speak, and didn’t get home til very late. His wife asked “what was his speech about?” and the man said, “I don’t know, I didn’t stay for the verb.”"
— a terrible, terrible Latin joke. (via wheretoyet)
If I were going to describe the perfect contraceptive, it would go something like this: no babies, no latex, no daily pill to remember, no hormones to interfere with mood or sex drive, no negative health effects whatsoever, and 100 percent effectiveness. The funny thing is, something like that currently exists.
The procedure called RISUG in India (reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance) takes about 15 minutes with a doctor, is effective after about three days, and lasts for 10 or more years…
Oh, and when you do decide you want those babies, it only takes one other injection of water and baking soda to flush out the gel, and within two to three months, you’ve got all your healthy sperm again.
The trouble is, most people don’t even know this exists. And if men only need one super-cheap shot every 10 years or more, that’s not something that gets big pharmaceutical companies all fired up, because they’ll make zero money on it (even if it might have the side benefit of, you know, destroying HIV).
signal boost
DUDE
dude
dude
DUDE
can this replace the normal contraception methods we have pls
This has existed for YEARS. They ran an article about it in WIRED magizine but I don’t think anyone read it .-.
Maybe more reblogs then? Up to a million at least. We have this technology to get the word out and change the world.