#will never stop talking about max steel 2013

[aion-rsa]

Will an “Aggressively Anti-Snyder” Warner Stop the SnyderVerse?

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Say what you will about Zack Snyder’s Justice League, but the eponymous director’s streaming superhero redux managed to branch the DC Extended Universe movies off into its own tangential timeline, which has since been dubbed the “SnyderVerse” by the fandom that now passionately hashtags for its restoration in the studio’s main continuity. While recent revelations about Snyder’s rough relationship with Warner make said restoration unlikely, the director doesn’t entirely shut the door on such a notion.

We know that Snyder, once the driving creative force behind Warner’s DCEU, was already the odd man out with the studio by the time a personal tragedy incited him to relinquish the director’s chair of 2017 megamovie Justice League to the controversial tenure of Joss Whedon, but a recent comment from the director has stamped the idea with a powerful punctuation. While Snyder’s focus right now may be this month’s release of his new feature, Netflix-bound horror film Army of the Dead, one promotional interview in particular, with Jake Hamilton, saw him field the inevitable SnyderVerse question with an answer that’s rather inauspicious for its advocates.

“Warner Bros. has been aggressively anti-Snyder, if you will,” reveals Snyder. “Clearly, they’re not interested in my take. But I would also say that they certainly weren’t interested in—I would have said originally—in my take on Justice League. They certainly made decisions about that. I love the characters and I love the worlds and I think it’s an amazing place to make a movie and it’s glorious IP, so there’s that.”

Indeed, Snyder’s status as persona non grata with Warner was bluntly revealed, rendering the mere existence of Zack Snyder’s Justice League even more of an industry anomaly. The film, a four-hour tour-de-Snyder streaming offering that hit HBO Max back on March 18, was the culmination of nearly four years of persistent tagging of #ReleaseTheSnyderCut by fans of Snyder’s darker DCEU vision to press Warner to release the director’s pure vision of the film to contrast with the trimmed-down Whedon-directed theatrical release. Ultimately, proponents hailed the once-mythical manifestation of the Snyder Cut as a triumph—opacity of its streaming metrics notwithstanding—and their efforts have switched to a new hashtag campaign, #RestoreTheSnyderVerse, since it was revealed that Whedon’s film, not Snyder’s, was still considered Warner’s canonical version. It’s a development that obviously didn’t sit well with Snyder’s vocal fandom, which has become empowered by its achievement of essentially having willed the Snyder Cut into existence.

“I don’t know what could be done as you go forward other than, I think the fan movement is so strong, and the fan community is so—the intention is so pure, and I really have huge respect for it,” Snyder muses on the significantly narrowed chances of his return to the DCEU. “I would hope that cooler heads would prevail with them and that they would see that there’s this massive fandom that wants more of them, but who knows what they’ll do.”

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Snyder does seem to offer his fans small silver lining for some kind of reconciliation of the SnyderVerse. However, it’s important to remember that his fallout with Warner was the culmination of an initially auspicious working relationship that saw him tapped as the primary creative fulcrum for efforts to concoct a lucrative, Marvel Cinematic Universe-like franchise of shared-continuity DC Comic movies beginning with his directorial tenure on 2013’s Henry Cavill-starring Superman reboot, Man of Steel. While that film’s worldwide gross of $668 million worldwide wasn’t especially impressive against its $225 million budget when all expenses were taken into account, the studio still stuck to Snyder’s plans. Indeed, Snyder was going bring Batman into the fray, played by a big star in Ben Affleck, for a crossover-setting quasi-sequel that would become 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. However, that film’s $873.6 million worldwide take wasn’t a significant improvement to its Batman-less predecessor against an upped $250 million budget.

Consequently, the backs of studio suits had effectively turned by the time Snyder got to work on follow-up Justice League. Warner’s once-accommodating approach was significantly altered, resulting in the tightening of Snyder’s creative leash, since the studio had attributed the poor performances of the previous films to the director’s bleak, iconography-imbued approach. Thusly, since Warner wanted to protect the increasingly-expanding budget it had invested, production of the ensemble-driven third film became a battle between Snyder’s movie moroseness and the studio attempted to lighten his tone by injecting comic relief moments to make it into a popcorn-friendly crowd-pleaser. Therefore, the studio habitually nixed many of the ambitious, plot-diverging concepts that would eventually surface in the Snyder Cut. Deepening the divide, DC Entertainment creative chief Geoff Johns and Warner Bros. co-production head Jon Berg were deployed to “babysit” Snyder; a dynamic that became irreparably damaged upon the death of his daughter, Autumn.

Of course, even on the back of team member Wonder Woman’s solo film success earlier that year, Whedon’s 2017 Justice League movie fatalistically flopped, having grossed $657 million worldwide, failing to make a lofty $750 million break-even mark. While Warner would likely have preferred to leave that film in the past, especially since they’d found success and acclaim in the solo movie arena with Wonder Woman and, a year later, with Aquaman, the eventual manifestation of Zack Snyder’s Justice League came about due to substantial support—notably from the film’s stars—and possibly a “in for a penny, in for a pound” mentality to salvage the $300 million-budgeted box office boondoggle in some manner. While said cinematic salvaging would cost Warner an additional $70 million to complete its visuals, the Snyder Cut certainly got people talking.   

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Consequently, one might be left to wonder if Warner—perhaps after a few more years passes in the rear-view mirror—eventually returns to the mentality that, having already invested an insane amount of money in the SnyderVerse films, that there might be something salvageable. After all, Snyder recently revealed his plan for the never-realized proper Man of Steel sequel to bring city-bottling cyborg Brainiac to the big screen for the first time. Considering how Warner’s plans for its DC live-action films and television shows (e.g. HBO Max’s Green Lantern) are broad but rudderless—especially on what’s considered canon—there remains an ever so slight chance that someone at Warner might just revisit the SnyderVerse. For now, though, such a notion is dead on arrival.

The post Will an “Aggressively Anti-Snyder” Warner Stop the SnyderVerse? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[thanksjro]

Eugenesis, Epilogue Scene Three: A National Holiday Is Declared

Mark your fucking calendars, folks, it’s a once in a lifetime event.

Now, what could be making Rodimus happy?

Telling himself that Kup isn’t dead, that Thunderclash isn’t dead, that Prowl isn’t dead, that the medics had managed to find their brains and fix them, that it wasn’t actually them who had died but some cheap copies.

Telling himself that Primus himself had given them the cure for the Inhibitor Chips.

Telling himself what he wishes was true.

Telling himself lies.

So, let’s try this again. It’s January 12th, 2013, and Rodimus Prime is awake and alive in the camp that is now home to the Autobots.

Rodimus has been spending the last few days listening to the recordings Perceptor made for him from the time he was busy being mostly-dead. He doesn’t remember any of the time he spent not-dead, but the scientists have been trying their hand at spirituality and more or less explained it to him as him ever-so-slowly approaching the event horizon of joining with the Matrix. The Matrix that we now know is a computer that makes babies, and that we’d already known was chock full of Unicron. Is this what being in the Cloud is like? Because if so, I’m just going to commit to a physical hard drive for all my stuff so my documents don’t become clinically depressed.

And while we’re on this whole not-really-dead thing: you know, retcons feel a lot less needing of justification when they aren’t being pulled by the same writer who made the retcon necessary in the first place, in the same piece of writing. Roberts, if you didn’t actually want to kill Rodimus, you shouldn’t have taken away all of his pigmentation and dusted his ass in a ditch after Kup went off the deep end.

I don’t think he’s actually happy, guys.

He’s currently staring out the window, totally not painfully aware of just how unbelievably tired he looks. Remember when this was the guy who went on fishing trips and joyrides with ten-year olds? Rodimus remembers. He remembers it very clearly. Someone let this guy take Animated Bumblebee’s place for a few days before he goes and finds a pod filled with robo-cancer or something.

It’s time to bury the pain again, as High Command comes through the door.

They made it! Rewind’s OTP lives, unlike him. Time to get down to business.

Rodimus thanks everyone for coming to the meeting, and starts going over the revamp process for the brand new Autobase- they’ve cleaned out the corpses, sorted them by faction, done god knows what to the ones that couldn’t be identified one way or the other, and we finally get to know just what in the fuck Jolup was doing Downstairs.  

…Alright then, Ed Gein. Is this how they were going to handle that dropped Phase Sixer subplot in Lost Light? Because if so, Swerve what the 𝚏𝚞𝚌𝚔.

Rodimus has decided that they’re just going to bury that nightmare under forty tons of plasto-steel, to never see the light of day again. Moving on, he says that Metroplex is recovering rather well from his transplant.

Oh! Hello, Metroplex. You’re looking very… alive. Didn’t you just spend the better part of the week dead and lying on the seafloor?

Turns out that Titans are pretty hardy- they just ripped his head off and slapped it into the middle of the new Autobase and he was good to go.

Rodimus hasn’t heard from Galvatron since he got back- I’m hoping it’s because Soundwave took matters into his own hands- and it’s making him a bit nervous.

Time for status reports!

Magnus has had teams searching for bodies (brains, really) that they can bring back to Ratchet to fix up. He asks Rodimus about potentially building another outpost on Earth, but it looks like he won’t be getting to see Oregon again anytime soon. There’s also the issue of literally everything Xenon told him back on Aquaria- he asks for a private audience for that. Magnus, did you really wait this long to talk to your boss about this? He’s got the Matrix inside him right now, and you didn’t think it pertinent enough to bring up sooner? Priorities, man.

Ratchet’s injected all the POWs with the anti-Chip, which has helped their physical health tremendously. However, not all of them are regaining the ability to transform, and that’s opened up a real can of worms, mental health-wise.  

I’m with Ratchet on this one. I know we don’t exactly have a ton of real estate on the bombed-out husk that is Cybertron, but surely there was something better than the epicenter of the Quintesson Antiholocaust/Transformers Holocaust.

Rodimus says that anyone uncomfortable with the camp can stay in Fort Max’s old place next door until they’re more open to the idea. The reason they aren’t staying at Fort Max’s altogether is because it’s apparently too small to house everyone. There’s, like, maybe three hundred of y’all left, and Max wasn’t exactly petite. Maybe I’m missing something here.

Rodimus, uncomfortable with the topic, moves on to one that’s equally as uncomfortable- Prowl. Ratchet wants to send him off with a full, personal funeral. He’s not dead yet, but he might as well be. Still no donor. Rodimus opts to let the guy die naturally, even after Ratchet explains that he might still be in pain even in a pod and knocked out. Geez, any more good news, doc?

Oh ho, you thought this would stop with just a single robot? Not even close.

Mirage is allowed to be in a bad mood this time. I can’t even remotely fault him for that. And Autobots don’t give parental leave? What a rip.  

Yeah, except they’ve all been Quintesson nightmare babies. This is what some folks might call a problem. Are you telling me that they can just catch pregnancy like the common cold now? This is tapping into irrational teenage fears. Christianity-based fears.

I have to wonder, what’s the general feel behind this process? It’s completely random, even when it happens to someone who’s supposed to go through it, and people just kind of stand there and watch it happen. I feel like it’d be really fucking embarrassing to just keel over and start going through mitosis in the middle of a room full of your peers. Then the whole murder-baby thing starts happening, and folks are drawing guns on your abdomen to top it all off. At what point do you just say “screw it” and have your torso removed?

Ratchet’s been storing the Quintessons in stasis pods, as opposed to Soundwave’s snap judgement of “kill now, repress later.” He’s run all the tests he can think of, and the things aren’t exactly hostile- they don’t really do anything, honestly. Perhaps murder-baby is too harsh a term. Still, they gotta figure out something to do with the little bastards. High Command’s been asking around off-planet.  

Well, there’s one mystery solved! Meeting’s over, Rodimus shoos everyone away, but Siren has something to report: he and Chromedome figured out Nightbeat’s final words.

Oh wow, I was WAY off. Road trip!

#transformers #jro #jro punches me in the face #eugenesis #part seven #epilogue #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #prose writing

[sheliesshattered]

Fic meme

I was tagged by @primarybufferpanel​ -- thank you darling, this was a ton of fun to do!

This got a bit long, so I’ll put the people I’m tagging here at the top:  @claraaoswald​, @ambitious-witch​, @someillplanetreigns​, and @junoinferno​, if you feel like playing!

My AO3, my old non-updating fanfiction.net

Fandoms I’ve made fanworks for: Oh lord. I’m only going to count fanfiction that has actually been posted, but if I tried to count up every fandom that I’d started writing for and left unfinished fragments languishing on various harddrives and googledocs over the years, it’d be at least double this list. I have two pseuds on AO3, with the fics roughly organized by fandoms that I post about on this Tumblr account (sheliesshattered) and fandoms that pre-date my time on Tumblr that I don’t post about very much (glasscannon). Putting all the fandoms together in one alphabetized list:

Black Sails - 5 Doctor Who - 8 Firefly/Serenity - 1 Game of Thrones - 1 The Hobbit - 1 The Hunger Games - 1 Iron Man - 2 Law & Order: Criminal Intent - 1 Mad Max - 2 Once Upon A Time - 1 Poldark - 3 Star Wars - 3 Twilight - 7 The West Wing - 1

Number of fics: 38, including a big unfinished epic that I never moved over from ff.n, and don’t plan to unless I finish it someday.

Fics I spent more time on: I’m not even quite sure how to measure this. I’m a slow writer, and a single story can easily hold my attention for years at a time, or be something I return to when there isn’t a newer fandom temporarily consuming me. I don’t tend to keep track of how many hours I put into a fanfic, though. The unfinished epic I mentioned is probably near the top of that list, and was a huge part of my life from 2009 to 2013. Other contenders would be the All Hands series (written with PBP!), and Truth Universally Acknowledged, particularly if you include all the massive world-building that went into that one. 

But really probably the one I’ve poured the most hours into, between research and writing, is a Doctor Who epic that hasn’t yet seen the light of day, called Home The Long Way ‘Round. Because I have such a habit of starting long stories and then not finishing them, I’m making myself get that one completely done before I post any of it to AO3, so I don’t have anything to show for it yet, but I’ve put a ton of time into it over the last five years or so. Hopefully someday I’ll actually get to share it. :)

Fics I spent less time on: Like I said, I’m a very slow writer, so any time I can turn out a story in a matter of days I’m just absolutely shocked. I wrote The Message over the course of about 24 hours, which is probably the fastest I’ve ever finished anything in my life ever, lol.

Longest fic: The All Hands series is sitting at 126,800 words, and PBP and I have more finished for it that we’re hoping to post soon-ish. The unfinished epic made it to almost 119,000 words before I ran out of steam. Truth Universally Acknowledged racked up about 54,000 words before my co-writer and I took a break from it, and probably triple that in world-building bibles and timelines, etc. On the works-in-progress side of things, Home The Long Way ‘Round is sitting at about 40,000 words currently and only about a third of the way done, and the For As Long As We Get series is at 21,000 words between what I’ve posted and what I’m still working on, and will definitely continue to grow.

Shortest story: 10 Seconds, at 208 words. Also one of the very first fanfics I ever finished and posted online.

Most hits: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by like a factor of 20 vs anything else I have on AO3. It’s the only time I’ve written for the main pairing in an active fandom (tho my purview in the co-writing was more on the secondary pairing), and that translated to a stupidly large number of hits. Fanfiction.net doesn’t count hits the same way, but the unfinished epic is sitting at about 3500 favs.

Most kudos: Setting The Stuns’ls, the first in the All Hands series -- which is SHOCKING considering that’s a tiny rowboat of a fandom, for a non-canon background pairing that has literally about 30 seconds of shared screentime, and the two romantic leads don’t so much as kiss over the course of 94,000 words (longing looks, significant hand-touches, mutual pining, definitely, but kissing, not so much).

Most bookmarks: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by a long shot.

Fic you want to rewrite or expand: I don’t tend to edit a story once it’s been posted, beyond correcting a typo or adding a missed word. Once it’s published, it’s finished and I don’t change it significantly. I do have quite a few (so, so many) unfinished stories that I would love to finish up at some point.

Total words combined: Counting only published fics, including the unfinished epic (and a companion piece for it) that lives only on ff.n, I’m currently at 376,542 words total.

Fav fic you wrote: How can you make me choose between my children like this, honestly?? Siiiigh. I’m with PBP, whatever I’m working on currently is usually my favorite. I’m having a ton of fun with For As Long As We Get, and can’t wait to publish the next part of that, hopefully sometime this month. I’m incredibly proud of All Hands, and that occupied such a specific time in my life that I’ll always think of it fondly. I’m exceptionally happy with the character voices and use of language in both Breathe Again and Upon This Rock Will I Break Myself, Until It Shows Me Your Beloved Face, and tend to feel like they don’t get enough love vs how much I love them. But my one true favorite is and will always be Home The Long Way ‘Round, and hopefully I’ll actually be able to finish it and post it someday.

Share a bit of your WIP or idea if you have anything planned: Again, how can I possibly choose just one?? Even just within the Doctor Who fandom, I currently have more than half a dozen stories actively in progress. But since I’ve talked it up so much without being able to link to it at all, and just declared it my all-time fav, I’m going to break one of my own rules and post the whole first chapter (eek!) of Home The Long Way ‘Round behind a read more:

Chapter 1: Orange Dreams

The sound of the wind is whispering in your head Can you feel it coming back? Through the warmth, through the cold, keep running ‘til we’re there. We're coming home now, we’re coming home now. —Home, Dotan

 The winds shrieked and howled around her. Clara had never been in a tornado, but she imagined it would feel like this to stand in the eye of one. She could see gusts lifting the tops off the sand dunes in shimmering ribbons, gold against the orange sky. The waves of airborne sand dissipated a few feet from her, leaving only a jagged grittiness in the air.

A woman with long blonde hair was yelling at her, her words ripped away by the wind.

“Tell me again!” Clara called back to her. “Tell me how to find home!”

“It’s just physics!” the other woman shouted, taking a step closer; they were nearly the same height. “No information can ever be lost! Start from zero, and run the math! We’ll be waiting on the other end of that equation!”

There was something Clara desperately wanted to tell this woman who looked at her with kindness behind the steel of her eyes, but in that moment, the words wouldn’t come.

“Look!” someone yelled behind Clara, and though she didn’t want to take her eyes off her, she instinctively looked up, following the line of the other person’s arm up into the gathering storm-whipped dusk. There, silhouetted against the last of the light, was the unmistakable blue boxy shape of the Doctor’s TARDIS, spinning quickly as it flew away—

Clara jerked awake, her heart hammering against her ribs, already sitting up and pulling off her sleep mask before she realised what had woken her was the sound of the TARDIS materialising in the sitting room of her flat. She took a moment to catch her breath, trying to hold onto the details of the dream. In the other room, the TARDIS’s familiar wheezing and groaning came to a stop with a soft thud, followed by the squeak of the door.

“Doctor?” Clara called, not bothering to hide the sleep nor the annoyance in her voice.

He poked his head around her bedroom doorframe, grey hair awry and his most innocent expression plastered on — which meant he knew he was waking her and felt at least marginally bad about it. “Hello, Clara. It’s Wednesday,” he said pleasantly, by way of explanation.

“Is it?” she asked, deadpan.

“Technically.”

“You do know that I have to work today, don’t you?”

“Not for another six hours. So come on, up-and-at-‘em, plenty of time to go out and save the universe and still be back in time for your morning coffee. I’ve an adventure that simply won’t keep, so come on!”

His excitement was infectious, as he must have known it would be, but Clara clung to her annoyance a little longer, mostly for show. “You have a time machine: everything can keep,” she replied, but waved him off before he could launch into a lecture on all the ways that statement was false, at least from a temporal physics standpoint. He lectured anyway, hovering outside her bedroom door as she dressed, though Clara expected it was mostly to keep himself from pacing in anticipation. She followed more than half of it, and worried a bit over how often she let him babble on about the minutiae of time travel these days.

By the time the universe had been set to rights — or at least one small blue world, home to a race of sentient seahorses, that had been facing imminent extinction in the form of a rogue exoplanet — she had nearly forgotten her unsettling, vivid dream.

--

Given the recent events on Skaro, Clara was unsurprised when bits of her experiences there began to filter into her dreams. Truthfully, she had expected to dream of it more often than she did, but in the weeks that followed, more nights than not her sleeping mind instead conjured up the strange orange landscape. She revisited that screaming sandstorm so often it became almost comforting, and before long, other dreams joined it. 

Clara was leaned against a railing on a high balcony, overlooking a large city coming alight as dusk crept on, a rusty sunset that stretched the width of the horizon bathing the world in amber. The woman with the serious eyes and long, straight blonde hair stood beside her, in the middle of a conversation, as happened so frequently in dreams.

“Alright, but what about the last stage?” Clara asked, elbows resting next to hers on the railing. “That bit depends on us actively doing something, and you know we can’t rely on my knowledge. I can’t take any of the engineering or navigation with me, so it’ll be down to him.”

“And he loves a good puzzle,” the other woman said confidently, flicking her hair over her shoulder with a twitch of her head. “He’ll want to find us. He’ll figure it out.”

“Before I die of old age? Are you sure? My mother was one of his professors at the Academy, I’ve seen his test scores. I think we need a fail-safe.”

“He did graduate,” she pointed out reasonably.

“He passed his exams with a fifty-one percent on his second attempt! No, we can’t assume he’ll have all the baseline information to even consider such a solution, much less actually accomplish the maths. We have to find some way to hide it with me,” Clara said. “Or in his TARDIS.”

The woman was silent for a long moment, her mouth set in a thoughtful line. On the distant horizon, the sun had finished its slow descent, but below them the city was coming to life, the light not so much fading as changing sources, becoming ever so slightly more golden.

“By that point in the timeline,” the blonde woman said, speaking slowly, still thinking it through, “you’ll have been exposed to his timestream and to the crack in the universe, so some of your memories will probably start leaking through. If we structure the extraction the right way, we might be able to embed a particular thought or moment into your consciousness before you go into the Schism.”

“What’d you have in mind?” Clara asked, turning her head to look at her.

“This conversation?” she suggested, laughing, her broad smile transforming her face. “No, a phrase would be cleaner, I think.”

“‘Run the math, you idiot boy’?” Clara suggested, also giggling.

“Oh yes, that’d go over well! No, if you want him to do something, call him clever. Works every time!” she laughed, leaning her shoulder into Clara’s.

“The horrid thing is that I know the temporal physics for this is part of my mother’s coursework,” Clara groaned. “If he hadn’t slept through so many of her classes, this would be a non-issue!”

“Ah, but a Doctor who was always responsible? What a boring universe that would be!”

Above them, the stars were beginning to come out, though the glare of the city obscured them. Through the haze of the dream, Clara couldn’t find any constellations she recognised. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I was the one who helped him steal that box in the first place.”

“And if he could take half a moment to remember that,” the blonde woman said seriously, “he might realise the role of his TARDIS in all of this, and start to think of the solution that way.”

“‘Run the math, you—”

“Clever.”

“—boy, and remember when you met me’?”

The other woman nodded, considering. “That could do it. Your chronodeterminate conjugation won’t work until you come into contact with at least a little regeneration energy. Assuming you choose regeneration on Trenzalore, it might start kicking in then, in plenty of time for the last stage.”

“Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me,” Clara whispered up to the distant stars, cradling her chin on her arms against the railing.

The woman mimicked her position, the golden light of the city and the silver light of the stars catching in her long pale hair. “It’s just physics,” she murmured back. “Start from zero and run the math. I’ll be waiting at the other end of that equation. We’ll all be waiting.”

--

As unsettling as they were, at least the orange-tinged dreams were better than nightmares of Daleks, of being locked in the Dalek casing, unable to convince the Doctor that it was her, it was her, she wasn’t a Dalek, she wasn’t a Dalek! Dreams of the Doctor peering at her down an eyestock, this face or the last, or any of the others buried deep in her subconscious, hearing her but not knowing her, seeing her but not saving her.

Clara grasped for that orange sky, let it carry her away in bronze sandstorms, golden cities slowly coming to life, and starlight caught in tawny hair.

--

Monday morning third period found her Year 10 students taking an essay exam while Clara doodled on a scrap piece of paper, trying to pull images and phrases out of the orange haze that had taken up residence in her slumbering hours since Skaro. There were bits that tugged at her memory, like a song she couldn’t quite place but whose tune was intensely familiar.

She’d written Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me across the top of the page, and her eyes strayed to it every few seconds. The phrase had stayed with her after she woke, and had been on the tip of her tongue ever since, as though it was a message she was meant to deliver. Below it she’d rewritten the phrase, but crossed out six words: Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me.

It was too close for comfort to the phrase that had, in retrospect, changed her life, sent her on her current course. The Maitlands’ mnemonic for their wifi password, which she’d said out loud during that first phone conversation with the Doctor, had caught his attention somehow, and it wasn’t until she jumped into his timestream that she understood. It was the last thing she’d said to him before sacrificing herself to save him. Every fragment of her scattered through his timestream had said it to him at some point as well, the words reverberating endlessly up and down his timeline.

Why her dreams would dredge it up now, and in such a strange context, Clara had no idea. They didn’t feel like random images, but more like memory-dreams, like the bits of echo lives that filtered through to her sleeping mind from time to time. It had to mean something.

Half way down the scrap paper she’d written: It’s just physics. Start from zero and run the math. Below this was the very helpful ??? and Clara idly traced over the question marks again. Physics was still a foreign language to her, despite how much the Doctor prattled on about it at times. She could bring this to him, she mused, but what was it, really? Her subconscious doing backflips in the wake of Skaro, that was all. No grand mystery to solve, no universe-altering secret code, just her. She wouldn’t bother the Doctor with this quite yet.

Besides, she was certain she could tease this apart on her own, follow the clues to their logical conclusion without his assistance. The dreams were insistent, and felt familiar, but Clara was sure she’d never dreamed of the blonde woman and the orange sky prior to Skaro. That was the next clue, then, and she jotted it down on her scrap paper. Something had changed after Skaro, something that caused her subconscious mind to dredge up these particular buried memories. 

She needed more information. Dreams about her echo lives were always stronger when she was aboard the TARDIS travelling in the Vortex, sharper and easier to remember. Maybe these orange dreams would be, too. And maybe the TARDIS itself would have some answers for her.

--

Of course, she didn’t sleep aboard the TARDIS very often, with her insistence on returning home for a week of Real Life in between their Wednesday trips. But the Doctor was never adverse to her sticking around longer than she’d planned, and in the end it didn’t take much to convince him: 

“I’ve a staff meeting at work that I’m dreading,” Clara told him on that next Wednesday, when they returned to the TARDIS after their latest outing. “So what do you say I have a little kip and then we squeeze in another adventure before you take me back to face my workday?”

She thought for a moment that the Doctor might question the change in their routine, but he seemed thrilled about the idea. When he announced that he had some tinkering with the engines he’d been putting off that should keep him occupied while she slept, Clara made an excuse to linger in the console room — “just going to finish reading this chapter, then off to bed” — until after he’d gone. Once he’d disappeared down the corridor and around a corner, she quietly set aside her book, then slipped out of her armchair and down the stairs towards the console. The rotors hummed overhead, and somehow Clara knew the TARDIS was aware of her, and was curious to see what she would do.

Carefully clearing her thoughts, she made her way over to the telepathic circuits, pushed up her sleeves, and slid her hands into the strange interface. Focus was the key, she knew, and she was nothing if not focused. She closed her eyes and held two very specific thoughts in her mind: the sand-whipped orange sky in her dreams, and the clear question, Where, please?

She hoped the please would help.

It was a long quiet moment with the circuits warmly cradling Clara’s fingers, and then something on the console beeped. Her eyes flew open and she carefully extracted her hands from the telepathic interface before pulling the monitor down to eye level.

Gallifrey the screen read in English, below an image of a startlingly red-orange planet. Immediately prior to the Time Lock.

Clara felt her heart thud painfully against her ribs as she read the brief text again. She’d been dreaming of Gallifrey? She knew she’d had an echo life on Gallifrey, but she remembered that interaction with the Doctor, and it happened indoors. She had never before dreamt of the Gallifreyan sky. Had it been buried somewhere in her subconscious with the rest of her memories of that life? Why surface now?

More confused than ever, she clicked the screen back to the desktop, unreadable Circular Gallifreyan floating idly across the display. Perhaps she should bring this up with the Doctor — it was his home world, after all. But the whole point of this had been to dream while they were in the Vortex, and if she didn’t get a move on, he’d be ready for their next adventure before she’d even managed to fall asleep. She could talk with him about it later. 

And if things worked tonight as she hoped they would, maybe she would even have a bit more information to bring to him when she did.

--

“Fire suppressant in Pod Four!” 

The frantic call was quickly overwhelmed by the sound of the requested suppressant dispensing from the ceiling. When it ended, the speaker, dressed in the dark red uniform of a technician, brushed soot and foam off his shirt. 

“It hates me, that one,” he said, nodding at the unassuming gray cylinder in the open pod in front of him. It was devoid of features, even its doors invisible now in the wake of the fire, two meters tall and one meter in diameter, just like all the other patients in the workshop. But somehow it did seem to be glowering at him.

“And it always will, stop wasting your time,” his coworker said flippantly. He was perched in front of a console on the other side of the room, deep in his own repairs. “Just get the Impossible Girl to do it, she’ll have it eating out of her hand by lunchtime.”

Their conversation occurred in the time it took Clara to enter the large oblong workshop and make her way to the far end where the two were working. “I heard that,” she said seriously, earning a guilty-looking jump from the man who had spoken most recently. She continued over to Pod Four and leaned against the outer casing, arms folded over her uniformed chest, one booted ankle crossed over the other. “What did you do now?” she demanded of the first technician.

He looked at her with wide eyes, more out of genuine fear than mock innocence, in her estimation. “I just told it—”

“You what?” she snapped, in a tone she usually reserved for misbehaving students.

He wilted a little but started again “…I told it to—”

“Told it?”

“…to give me access to the logs,” he mumbled, dropping her gaze.

“Told it to give you access to the logs?” she asked, voice harsh. “Well first off, Number Four here prefers male pronouns, respecting that might put you on better footing. And secondly, as with all TARDISes, you’ll get a lot further if you ask rather than tell.”

Behind her, the other tech scoffed. “They’re machines, we shouldn’t have to baby them like that. An access request is an access request.”

Clara turned her head to pin him with an icy glare. “Some days I cannot believe I let you work here,” she told him bluntly. “They aren’t just machines, as you very well know. Yes, there’s hardware we need to be able to work with, but that’s nothing more than a radio, at some level — only instead of radio waves, we’re using oswin waves to talk to pan-dimensional beings so large, they can’t have a physical form in this dimension. Who, with a little extra energy, can take us and an infinite amount of folded space to nearly any point in spacetime. Just think about the massive intelligences that speak to us through each of those machines!

“But more to the point,” she said, turning back to the tech still covered in soot, “you have to understand their viewpoint of the universe, and their understanding of time. A Time Lord telling a TARDIS what to do is akin to creating a fixed point in spacetime. It’s in their nature to want to avoid fixed points. Ask instead, let him find his own way ‘round to it.”

Before the beleaguered technician could reply, there came a polite knocking from the far end of the room, and Clara turned to see a soldier standing in the doorway of the workshop, looking a little out of his depth. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have a message for—” he paused to glance down at the datapad in his hand, “for the Oswin. From the Lady President. Top priority.”

Clara was moving towards him before he’d finished speaking, curious and concerned, her attention focused on the message in his hands. But the dream faded out before she reached him, her mind moving on to something more abstract, more difficult to hold on to.

When she woke in her bed aboard the TARDIS, she stared at the ceiling with fond frustration. “If that was your attempt at help,” she whispered to the ship, “then I do not understand the message.”

--

It still wasn’t enough to bring to the Doctor, she decided later that day, watching him spin around the console room in the afterglow of a successful adventure, people saved, the universe bettered. So she was dreaming of Gallifrey, what of it? Many of the details in that last dream matched up with what she remembered of her interaction with the Doctor in that life. And while he occasionally enjoyed comparing memories of all the times her echoes had met him, she’d found he wasn’t especially keen on discussing the one in which she’d helped him steal the TARDIS and leave Gallifrey. Susan continued to be a point of pain for the Doctor, all these centuries later, and Clara understood him well enough to know better than to pick at that particular scab.

Still. That phrase was on a loop in her head: run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me. The emphasis on their meeting hadn’t been part of the original phrase, and now she was dreaming of the life in which they’d met face to face for the first time, from the Doctor’s perspective. Clearly they would have to discuss it at some point. 

Eventually, but not yet.

#long post #about me #my writing #like seriously all of it #fanfiction #fandom life #AO3 #Home The Long Way 'Round #For As Long As We Get #All Hands #Truth Universally Acknowledged #et al #if you read that chapter let me know what you think! #❤️

[yvghv]

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[evilasiangenius]

Ekstasis end notes

Usually I wait until I’m done with the story to write up end notes, but Ekstasis is looking to take some time to write.  So before I forget the details (and I’ve already forgotten some things) I thought I’d post the notes here. 

Note: this is a working draft; I’ll be revising these since I still have some other stuff to go through.  

Chapter 1

Ekstasis starts after Furiosa has lost her arm but before she goes to visit Angharad and the girls at the end of Fortuna.  That part I haven't come to yet.

The Ace talks more in detail about putting on mourning scars in chapter 12 of Gloria.  It's assumed that many people have already put on mourning (Coil, Morsov, Nux, etc.) since it's been some time since Acosta's death.

Imperator Acosta dies in chapter 4 of Fortuna.

Coil had been doing the bulk of caring for Furiosa at night, mostly when she was very ill, until the Ace was well enough to take over.  He could only come later in the evenings due to work.  Furiosa does not remember those early weeks of recuperation when Coil was by her side and never learns about it until many years later in Gloria.

Furiosa and Coil's earlier relationship is explored in Tenera.  In chapter 4 of Euphoria, their friendship and relationship is damaged at the last War Games.  They haven't been as close in recent months as they were before the War Games.

Chapter 2

This is the car that Nux drives in Fortuna.

Morsov was assigned to Nux as his Lancer in Fortuna.  He's surprised because Furiosa is not wearing the white and is basically topless.

Morsov saved Furiosa's life on top of the War Rig in Fortuna.

Rose the Blackthumb is a character that can be seen in the movie, a heavyset War Boy in overalls that is doing auto body work on the Interceptor when Max makes his wild run through the lower warren of the War Tower.

The higher number the gauge, the thinner the steel.  22 is more along the lines of contemporary cars, which are far lighter and more fragile than classic cars of the 20th century.

A War Boy of War Boys is one who has survived the desert initiation run, which is written about in L'Arbre du Ténéré, a three day walk with no food or water.  

From the moment Slit accepts Nux's proposal, several days pass, up to a few weeks.  I think I had this figured out when I was writing Tenera, that it would take a week or two to get everything ready.

Nux had probably been using a communal wheel up until this point, probably some nearly unadorned one that is used by the daily patrol drivers whose vehicles are assigned at random as opposed to the more ornate and decorated wheel that he and Slit put together.

If Slit had left Nux alone in the car overnight, it would have said something rather unpleasant about their relationship to others.

Slit's bracer then is a copy of Rictus' bracer.  Copying elite goods using ordinary materials is archaeologically attested as far back as the Chalcolithic.

In the short story Our World, Nux tells Capable that his bracelet is welded on, but he's not telling the truth there.

The story of the hex key is in chapter 2 of Vulnera.

So far, Slit is careful to keep his self-harm to parts of his body that are covered by his clothes.

Chapter 3

Some of the work done on Furiosa's hand is described in chapter 5 of Rota.

There are heavier and lighter deka- weights (since it's base-10 metric), and War Boys know from context which one is which.  So either dekagrams or dekakilos.  This idea originally came from Italian, which uses etto to signify 100 gram measurements.

Morsov, your Buzzard is showing.  Stop staring at Rose literally like a piece of meat.

A few weeks have passed since Furiosa left the infirmary in the first chapter and her arm is finally completely healed up.

In lieu of traditional fats for soap making, soap at the Citadel is made from petroleum distillates.

Coil has been sick with worry that Furiosa would die.  He's already lost one partner and the stress of possibly losing another partner has been hard on him.

Petroleum jelly is naturally black.  The idea here is that there is a more expensive purified clear one that is used medicinally, and otherwise the regular black one is used decoratively.

Stonker's backstory and childhood is explored in later chapters of Vincula, starting at chapter 9.

War Boys that have an interest and skill in drawing sometimes end up learning how to brand.  Win definitely did this too.

Acosta had been Ace's friend since they were both teenagers.  This can be seen in various chapters of Vincula, starting around chapter 4.

Morsov's childhood and his being rescued out of the waste is explored in Refuge.  

The Ace putting a crewmate under the wheels is discussed in chapter 4 of Rota.

More on Morsov's relationship with his former Driver Elvis can be found in chapter 4 of Euphoria.

The music box plays Hushabye Mountain.

Chapter 4

Bioluminescent glowworms are native to Australian caves.  The Buzzards cultivate them when they can for extra light.

In the dark, Buzzards all wear a small red piezoelectric LED bulb.  Red light helps them keep their night vision.  Their cars also are fitted with red bulbs.

Tran and Dart were Coil and Furiosa's rival team in chapter 3 Vulnera.  They've all been buddies since (see Lamia).

The current hierarchy, from top to bottom, and rating War Boys by experience is Furiosa, the Ace, Tran, Coil, Dart, Morsov.  However since Morsov trained directly under the Ace, he's been put in charge.

War Boys eat mostly non-meat foods.  The only meat that's eaten in this part of the wasteland is human, which as far as the War Boys know, only the Buzzards eat, though the War Lords are known to indulge, such as in chapter 6 of Vulnera.

The cohort of War Pups are those specifically chosen to be trained to be future Lancers and Drivers, which is a small percentage of the whole (less than 20%).  All the other kids are Organics, which means they do little jobs around the Citadel and work on the farms.  Sometimes non-cohort boys can work their way into the Revhead world and ostensibly get trained up to be a  Lancer, but that sort of promotion is not as common as it was in the past during Ace's youth for example, since there is more available labor now and those in charge can afford to be picky about who gets promoted to do what.

After the War Party in Fortuna, many captives and vehicles were captured.

The War Games are described in chapters 3 and 4 of Euphoria, and live training is described in chapter 3 of Vulnera.

The Ace fell off the War Rig during a battle in Fortuna.

Stonker is defined as “something that is very large or impressive of its kind.” I first came across the word reading BBC Formula 1 Grand Prix highlights (“That was a stonker of a lap!”).

The goggles Morsov gives to the Ace were the ones that Morsov brought with him when he came to the Citadel in Refuge.  Of course, rubber parts have been replaced over time, but he gives these to the Ace, who wears them from now on.

Chapter 5

Nux lesson plans as part of his daydreaming, among other things.  Visualization is important for many athletes, actors, and others in general (e.g. the book “The Inner Game of Tennis”)  Specifically for this story, I envisioned it as how Formula 1 drivers do a lot of visualization.  A dramatization of this can be seen in the movie Rush where James Hunt visualizes the Monaco Grand Prix course.  Look up 'Internal Motor Imagery Rush 2013' on Youtube.

The Tertius and Quartus Imperators are the two Imperators seen on top of the Gigahorse in the movie.  I think some fans call them Frank and John (John and Frank?).  I don't know if they're fraternal or identical twins.

The very formal speech of the twin Imperators is partially to show their status, but mostly because Immortan Joe demands propriety in his presence.  As soon as business is over, they drop the formality, but notice that they pick up the formality again with the Ace, suggesting they have some serious official  business with him.

The different emblems can be seen in the movie: The Prime Imperator wears the full emblem, made from metal, and the Secundus (aka Composite) Imperator wears a leather badge.

Furiosa changes her manner of speech to be more deferential to the higher-ranked Imperators.  However throughout the series, she hasn't changed her manner of speech much unless she's talking to someone higher-ranked, which sort of suggests that she's always a little bit off in contrast to the other War Boys, never quite fully acculturated into War Boy Society, though her style of speech turns out to be very suited for the way an Imperator speaks.

Imperator Acosta's given name is taken from Formula 1 driver Fernando Alonso's last name.

“Extended family of the long run” means that the Imperators have known the Ace since they were all survivors of the long failed run to Walhalla, a place in the mountains.  This story is told in Rota.

The Tertius and the Quartus know Coil because Coil is their son, by a Milking Mother.  Coil does not know this however, as parentage is kept secret.  For those curious, Coil's mother has already appeared in the series as a minor background character.

Tribal affiliation is more important than race or gender in this world, so Morsov will always be slightly ostracized because of his Buzzard origins.  Bandits and ferals are considered opportunists and many of the children they might have may be captives themselves or claim to be captives, but Buzzards are hated enemies.

Dart's the mathematical one.

At 11.25 hands, Stonker is just shy of 6'6”.  Unlike Nux, who stayed very small until he grew very suddenly, Stonker has always been tall for his age, so he had been promoted quickly to account for it, making Driver before he grew too tall to be a Lancer.  It also didn't hurt that he was well-connected.

Many minor War Boy characters are named after friends' pets.  Bucket is no exception.

Stonker must have made an official offer to Bucket at the War Games, because it was at the same War Games when Morsov's Driver broke up with him.  Of course, Morsov losing his ride was probably not official for a few days, so Stonker wouldn't have known.  Once Stonker asked Bucket properly before the community, there would be no way to back out of it politely.

Paired War Boys often smooth out each other's rough spots.  Dart does this for Tran, and Nux does this for Slit.

Dart's too far-sighted to be very helpful doing close-up work.  He passed his Revhead qualifications by being strong in his understanding of theory and concepts, even though he can't see well enough to do the fine work.  He's more useful as a scout, a look-out, and a sniper.

As Miss Giddy says, there is always a girl called Splendid.  (Euphoria, Chapter 3).

The new Secundus is Elvis, Morsov's former Driver.  The prior Secundus died in battle.

Chapter 6

In the Iliad, Patroclus is addressed as 'O my Rider'.

Win is quoting an old Middle English song, “Sumer is Icumen in”.

Coil and Win are hiding out in the old warren, which is the same place that the Ace hides Morsov in Refuge.

Coil signs “crazy about you”, similar to Jessie in the original Mad Max movie.

The Ace talks more about what happens to Imperators' bodies after their deaths in chapter 5 of Rota.

Moki came from a Trader family.

Frances is the Ace's older sister, who is described in Rota.

This is a long time before he is known as The Ace, so he's merely called Ace.

Nothing goes to waste; anything that can be eaten will be eaten.

Ace is of course, ace, but not aromantic.  But Acosta doesn't understand, and thinks it a blow to his pride.  I haven't written it, but the reason Acosta suggests that Coil should fool around with other War Boys during the War Games (mentioned in Euphoria, chapter 4) is because that's what Acosta did himself after his break with Ace years ago.  It's very quietly hinted at in Vincula, but Moki became Acosta's lover, which gave Moki a lot of influence (and thus furthered both Win and Stonker's careers).  Moki loved Acosta despite the fact that he knew Acosta always loved Ace more.

In Vincula, it's revealed that in the past, Elvis also courted Coil when Coil was a Lancer.  He is much more respectful toward Coil than he is toward Morsov, because Coil is very well-connected and has many friends.  In contrast, Morsov is poorly connected and socially ostracized, which gives Elvis more freedom in abusing him because there would not be social pressure to make Elvis stop.  What Elvis does to Morsov, he would not dare to do to another Lancer.

Weight requirements can be very strict on pursuit vehicles, where Drivers and Lancers both want to be as strong as possible without overly weighing down the vehicle.  This follows any formula of racing cars where driver have to keep down their weight, which is much harder for tall drivers than smol ones (see Nico Hulkenberg vs Fernando Alonso).

In this case, the shopbound Revhead Bristow probably worked their way up from an Organic and never trained to fight.  It's not always the case that someone is shopbound because they screw up or they're too tall.

Gastown and Bulletfarm War Boys are a lot poorer than Citadel War Boys; in general, they aren't fed or watered as much.  Of course things are different with their Imperators, but the War Boys in general just are not as strong or healthy compared to Citadel War Boys.  This is my theory as to why Max can cut a swathe of destruction through the Polecats; not that Max is inherently stronger or a better fighter, but that even a Citadel bloodbag gets more to eat and drink than a Gastown War Boy.

Win is singing, “In the Shadow of Clinch Mountain.”  Besides symbolic reasons for this song, it also shows how the world was extremely international before it was killed, so culture was spread all around.

Chapter 7

Tin boxes in lieu of cardboard, since cardboard is more costly to produce.

I never described the internal construction of the tanker, but the way I imagine it, besides a large interior with which to haul goods and slaves, much of the tanker is lined with a water compartment that insulates the goods once it's full of water.  There is a subcompartment within the water compartment for milk, and the water around it keeps it cool and insulated.

Balanced packing is important so the tanker does not tip over when its lowered down on the lift.  If it's unbalanced, it could cause a lot of trouble.  There is a famous example of a military cargo jet that floundered and crashed in Afghanistan due to improperly secured vehicles leading to an unbalanced load.

The triangle run is referenced in both Vulnera and Gloria.  It is a reference to the historic transatlantic triangular trade of slaves, sugar, and rum.

Numbered Imperators serve Immortan Joe directly.

Runs to Bulletfarm and Gastown don't require more than a small crew because the Citadel territory is guarded very fiercely.  Long Bartertown runs require big escorts to protect the goods as they go far from Citadel territory.

The Wretched support themselves by working the mills.  These millsworks are mostly in the lower part of the Third Tower, and the Wretched are segregated from the War Boys to prevent any possible spread of disease, though there are some Organics and Imperators that oversee their work.  These people are paid in food and water.  Fighting War Boys never interact with such people.

These little terrace gardens are as close to private ownership of land as it gets for War Boys.  Some Revheads and Organics may tend little plots, trading off surplus foodstuff or giving it to families down below.

The hook seen in Max's long run is used to run a small cable car between the Immortan's Tower and the War Tower.  It helps move goods easily between the towers.

The idea for calling the motorcylists Moto-Lancers came from MotoGP, a major international motorcycle racing format.

Hundy is a slang term for a $100 bill.  It's also the name of a friend's pet.

Support trucks double carrying gear and fighting War Boys.  Some of them have mounted flamethrowers or guns.

Furiosa inadvertently builds alliances with War Pups by feeding them.

The Lift Imperator is named after the farmer in Babe, Arthur Hoggett.

Rule of three is first mentioned in Vulnera and is a vehicle safety principle for Lancers.  It means making sure to have three contact points with the vehicle, ideally at all times or at least as much as possible.  So both feet and one hand, both hands and one foot, etc.

The Immortan's drummers of course are the Doof Wagon drummers.

Chapter 8

An early idea I had was that some War Boys got sick from from painting the dials of their cars with radioluminescent paint, much like the radium girls poisoning cases in the early 20th century.

For various ideas on how War Boys would wear their blankets, I went looking at fashion blogs since oversized scarves, aka 'blanket scarves' were (are?) popular.  So Cosmo and various other sites gave me some good ideas on how to wear blankets since I wanted individual War Boys to have their own styles.  

Of course Furiosa has no idea what's going on in Morsov's personal life (ain't no Imperator got time for drama), but she would probably agree that as long as it didn't interfere with work or morale, that it would be fine.

Stonker's 'strange background' is described more in Vincula, chapters 9 and above.  The strangeness is that he is probably one of the only War Boys around to have been raised by a parent, Win.  This is the same Win who was Coil's former Driver.

Before he was rescued by the Citadel and became a War Boy, Win came from a Trader family and had always worn a condenser.  Some notes in Vincula talk about this more, but generally the idea is that without regular and certain sources of water, Traders relied on condensers, recycling even their exhalations.  This is of course similar to the Fremen in Dune (though possibly not as smelly since Traders don't wear stillsuits to recycle sweat and waste).  

I noticed in the movie that there is this thing that sort of looks like a rolled curtain tucked against the ceiling of the War Rig between the seats.  I imagine that this is a privacy curtain for the Imperator, so they can get some privacy and rest.

A bollard of course is something that can be used to block traffic.  This is to stand in for 'bollocks', which would be the more correct way of cursing.

Not all War Boys are sexually inclined.  This particular support truck has a couple asexual War Boys.

Bucket has had his teeth filed to sharp points, which suggests that his origins are from outside of the Citadel.  

The top belt, the one that many War Boys wear is used both as a practical safety measure (e.g. clipping it to the vehicle in order to take a little nap, in chapter 1 of Tenera) and also as an erotic symbol.  For example, in Delicia chapter 2, Win tells Coil to undress for sex but to keep his top belt on.

The Ace had intentionally left Furiosa and Coil alone.

Note that the Nux car had a crummy seat stuck in beside the Driver's seat, which gives us an idea of where Nux and Slit are headed in this story.

A temporary seat was bolted in the FDK when the Ace and Slit came to pick up Nux out of the waste in  L'Arbre du Ténéré.

Stonker is telling Morsov a story that Win had told him ages ago (Vincula).  As babyrubysoho asked me, is this Bedtime Star Wars?  The answer of course is, yes.

Slit's probably going to have to reopen his wound so his mouth can open more.  More on this later.

Chapter 9

I had an idea recently that the Buzzards were also called such because of their buzzing staticky radio code, not just because they were carrion feeders and scavengers.  More on Buzzards later.

When the Buzzard's backhoe tears off half of the front gunner's nest, paper and all sorts of other debris goes flying.  I suggest that it's full of accounting papers and radio logs, among other things.

The War Boys are definitely playing travel chess or checkers.

Youtube has many examples of people using Morse code on the radio and it is evident when people have practiced very hard at being good at it.  Of course, cryptography and language mixtures have warped the standard Morse code so that the War Boys have no way of deciphering what is being said.

The new binary of the world is 1-2 and not 0-1.  So banging on the roof of the car to notify the Driver comes in pairs, the War Rig needing assistance/speeding up the convoy sounds in pairs.  Furiosa giving Max the kill switch code is also in this binary code (1-2, red-black).  Of course the exception is that the Ace pounds on the top door three times to notify Furiosa about flares from the Citadel, but that's probably because he's seen something very unusual.

At a guess, food bars range between 400-600 calories a bar.

Eating five times a day is first referenced in Vincula, which is what the agricultural War Boys do during times of heavy work.  I borrowed this idea from agricultural workers in rural Taiwan who apparently eat five times a day during the rice planting because of how hard the work is.  In this case it's not so much that they're eating a lot, it's more that they're spreading out small meals over the entire day to stay more focused and alert.

Kashi now makes some savory bars that remind me how I imagine War Boy food bars.  Costco on the other hand has some veggie burgers (Don Lee Farms Veggie Patties) that remind me of the War Boy mush.  Mmm-mmm, McFeasting!

Slit's quote comes from Vulnera, where he talks more about his past.

The principle of aiding stranded vehicles in the open waste is something like the way ships are obligated to help out any other ship in distress.

The concept that the heliograph was much safer is because it needs a direct line of sight and to intercept it, someone would have to know exactly when the message was being sent and be in that direct line of sight, which would be very difficult since the road between the Citadel and Gastown is very well-guarded.  For example, the Buzzards probably use radio because otherwise they would have trouble coordinating their attacks.  However, being on a radio frequency opens them up to being overheard by Citadel forces.  

The way the Ace estimates the caravan capacity is by counting the vehicles.  (4 trucks x 2) + (3 cars x 2) + (5 motorcycles x 1) = 19.  (4 trucks x 3) + (3 cars x 3) + (5 motorcycles x 2) = 31.  He's giving a reasonable estimated min and max, though of course it could be a few people more or less.

A glass bottle like this can be seen mounted on the dash of the War Rig.

The bottle the Trader carries is basically similar to the one that is tied to the horse when Max gets sent to gulag in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

Sharing water is a show of trust as water is incredibly valuable.

I used a Wiradjuri online dictionary for names and pronunciation. https://wiradjuri.regenr8.org

The Noongar are traditionally from the southwest of Western Australia and the Wiradjuri are traditionally from central New South Wales near the east coast of Australia.  The mix of people from different parts of the continent is intentional, and to suggest that people everywhere have been displaced because of historic calamity.  Besides being a place name, Narrandera is a clan name of the   Wiradjuri, and also a moiety, from what I understand.  Narrandera also means prickly lizard or frilled lizard.

Not all Traders use the same naming conventions.  So Win gave his family name first as many Asians do, but Garru is giving her given name.  Garru is a Wiradjuri word for magpie.

The clothes that the People Eater wears (the three piece suit) is very much like what Traders would normally wear.  Though usually not with the exposed nipple rings...

It hasn't been developed much, but I thought that the People Eater should be a false Trader, someone posing as a Trader but who is not from a traditional Trader family.

Garru just taught Furiosa the two-fingered salute and its more impolite variant.  Now she can flip anyone off!

Garru has to get the other Traders' attention before signing.  

For example, soldiers stationed on the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea tend to be picked for height, supposedly to intimidate the other side.

I haven't gotten there yet, but this description of Nux was to suggest that before he falls sick, he was actually heavier built.  The idea was that when we see him in the movie, he's already lost at least 20 lbs which can be seen in how his clothes don't fit as well (notice how loose his trousers are compared to someone like the Ace).

Instead of having proper lights, the Trader truck has a bunch of flashlights stuck to its front.

The colors of the Traders were picked from Lazytown's three main characters: Robbie Rotten (red check), Stephanie (pink stripe), and Sportacus (blue).  You can blame Elinekeit for this.

Aunty Entity is of course the ruler of Bartertown, portrayed by Tina Turner in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

“Pinkie” aka Marlee is an albino.

Stonker should have used 'a little' or 'some' but instead he picks the wrong word because he is not super fluent in Trader.  This was written to suggest how someone who knows their second language better than their first might use their first language.

Nguyen is Stonker's given name, but as Stonker's mother was deaf, she only named him with sign language.  The name Stonker was given to him by the Tertius Imperator.  Nguyen is pronounced “Win”.  Stonker does not know any of this.

Unfortunately I don't remember where I found the name Marlee (because I remember changing the spelling around but I don't recall the original spelling), but I seem to remember it was also a bird name, like another kind of magpie or crow.

Stonker's not related to these Traders, but the Traders might know people who are related to him.

I recall using the U-Haul rental truck site to get an idea of how much a truck might carry.

Note that the People Eater wears black as well, aping high-ranked Traders.

“Afghanistan is a big place” is a quote from Metal Gear Solid V.

“Remember him when you look at the night sky” is a quote from the original Mad Max movie.

In Vulnera, Furiosa helped Coil shave.  It says something that Nux is doing it himself without Slit's help.

The beam of light coming from Bartertown is to suggest the Luxor Sky Beam in Las Vegas.

Chapter 10

Sometimes I make sure that imagery ties together from scene to scene and chapter to chapter.

That's definitely Stonker and Morsov.

This is Bartertown in the future, so it has expanded from the Bartertown we saw in Beyond Thunderdome.  A small town has formed outside the gates, similar to how the Wretched encampment has sprung up around the Citadel.

Despite the Citadel being a very rich settlement as the waste goes, Bartertown is even richer, so there are actually animals like dogs.

The Vuvalini visit Bartertown too.  But they run the opposite of War Boys, on moonless nights.

The entry into Bartertown has changed.  I imagined these queues as a cross between Disneyland and the county fair.

In Thunderdome, the signs said “Pigs = Power”.  However, I have removed the pigs from the story as they have mostly died out.  This is because pigs are harder to keep than cattle, goats, or sheep, since they eat the same kinds of food as people do, as opposed to the former who can live off scrub.  In addition, pigs need to be kept protected from the sun.  There are scholarly articles on why pork was not eaten in the ancient near east because pigs directly compete with humans for food and require shelter, which cattle, sheep, and goats do not need.  The assumption I am using here is that Beyond Thunderdome was set closer in time to the present pre-collapse day, therefore there were still a lot of animals around (monkey, horses, camels, pigs, dogs, etc.) but that between that time and the time the story is set, there were many periods of environmental hardship where many of these larger vertebrates died out.  Pigs therefore are no longer used to power the methane farm; it's now human waste.

In Thunderdome, you could also see the Collector's abacus on the little desk.

The title of Assayer is made up; there wasn't a name for this character in Thunderdome, not that I am aware of.

The Assayer is probably used to seeing all sorts of homemade artificial limbs.

When I thought about it, Furiosa's bodice could not have feasibly survived daily wear for years.  At some point it probably wore out, and now she has a shirt that's sort of similar, though it will probably have to take a beating for the next two years and change before we get to Fury Road.

This section was actually written in fall of 2015.  Originally, Ekstasis started in Bartertown, but I realized I had to backtrack because there were a lot of ideas to explore with the characters.  I don't regret it, but it's really taken some time to get to this point where I could use this section.  It's taken some moderate editing to match this with the current story and I had to take out some things I really liked, like Coil picking up a sizable wound but being very proud of being able to have a scar to remember Furiosa's first run as Imperator.

From Beyond Thunderdome we can see that Bartertown is heavily fortified, built up against a plateau.  I would suggest that beyond excellent geographic placement, it has good, reliable access to water, which is what's kept it an important center of trade through the years.  Now that many generations have passed since the initial founding of Bartertown, the plateau itself has been carved through with canyons and planted; there are many farms and even some livestock.  Of course access to those farms is very limited; it is all fully owned by Aunty Entity.  There is an inner city closer to the plateau where the more wealthy live and work.  The outer city is spread out further, though the Thunderdome and Aunty Entity's tower are still in their historic places.  The existence of the inner and outer city suggests social and economic stratification over time.

The Tomi Caf  is the Atomic Cafe.

Some of the buildings in Beyond Thunderdome look like they are plastered brick or mud brick, which also implies water wealth since if water is very scarce, one would not waste it on building materials.

Notice that Stonker refers to the kid consistently as a 'pup' but Morsov calls it a child.

The tailor's man is probably a servant as opposed to a husband.

In the ensuing generations after nuclear annihilation, we are starting to see a slow return to a cash-based economy.  This was pioneered by Immortan Joe in early runs to Bartertown, which is discussed in Rota.

Sandals with the words “follow me” imprinted on the bottom were used by prostitutes in ancient Greece.

For reference on the iconography, I imagine that one of Morsov's arm brands is the moon wheel and the other is the sun wheel.

The 'Aqua-Cola slaves' reference is definitely meant to be commentary on the modern garment industry.  

Notice that the Vuvalini in the movie wear scarves that are shot through with this rust-orange color that perhaps was once red.

The Many Mothers as a tribe culturally have higher respect for elders than War Boy society, which is more about respect for rank than age.

Some work would take a year not just because of intricacy but because the person making it was often not a full-time weaver, so it would be harder and longer work for them.

The bracelet on Coil's wrist was made from Furiosa's old dust wrap because she had no present for Coil on the night they were paired up.  He's been wearing it since.  It's intentional that he wears it on his right wrist, because some elements elements of Coil's character was meant to parallel Max in counterpoint.

I thought that War Boys who were too short to be Lancers (below 9.5 hands) ended up being sent to Gastown to be Polecats.

The oxen are actually much smaller than current oxen.  I calculated them to be about 1200 lbs a piece, which is on the smaller end of the spectrum for bulls.  The idea of course is that environmental stresses and selective favored smaller, more hardy animals that needed less water and food.

Why oxen?  Partially because it is an ostentatious sign of wealth for Aunty Entity to keep animals this big just to drag around a cart, but mostly because the Merovingian kings also traveled around in an ox-cart, dispensing justice.  There is also some ancient near eastern imagery connecting bulls to kingship.  This is to tie back to the idea that they are living in a time similar to the dark ages.

Working oxen need shoes similar to the way that working horses need horseshoes.

The historic iconography of the ruler is one who holds the scepter and the orb.  Here, Aunty Entity continues that ancient tradition that dates back to at least the Roman Empire.

Like the kings of the dark ages and the medieval, Aunty Entity is believed to have the power of healing.  The paint chip will likely be resold as a relic.

#fortunae plango vulnera series #mad max #mad max fury road #mmfr #wasteland culture

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 31st March 2019

Yeah, this is quite a bit frickin’ late but I’ve been busy tonight and you got the Beauty of “Doin’ Your Mom” this week anyway so I hope it’s fine that this is pretty late. Anyway, I don’t care, let’s get to the top 10, and this episode might barely get to the minimum word limit; we’ll see.

Top 10

Lewis Capaldi is at the top spot for what I believe is his fifth week with “Someone You Loved” at number-one.

At number-two we still have “Giant” by Calvin Harris and Rag ‘n’ Bone Man as the runner-up.

Tom Walker is up a spot to number-three with “Just You and I”, at a new peak.

I’m surprised that Jonas Brothers have been able to survive increased longevity, as their single “Sucker” moves up a single spot from last week to number-four.

Somehow, Ariana Grande’s “break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored” is still moving up spaces, one this week to number-five.

Dave’s “Location” featuring Burna Boy is up two spots to number-six.

We also have a new arrival in the top 10, with “Fashion Week” by Steel Banglez, AJ Tracey and MoStack. It’s producer Steel Banglez’s second top 40 hit and first ever Top 10 hit as a lead artist, AJ Tracey’s fourth top 40 hit and first ever Top 10 hit, as well as MoStack’s fourth top 40 hit and first ever Top 10 hit. Congratulations, guys, but we’ll talk about the song itself later.

LAUV’s “i’m so tired...” with Troye Sivan is up a space to number-eight.

At number nine, we have “Walk Me Home” by P!nk up three spaces to number-nine thanks to the video.

Finally, NSG’s “Options” featuring Tion Wayne is up a single spot to #10.

Climbers

We have three notable climbers this week, all of which are top 20 entries, with “Boasty” by Wiley featuring Idris Elba, Sean Paul and Stefflon Don moving up 11 spaces to #11 and “Here with Me” by Marshmello and CHVRCHES making its way up nine positions to #14. We also have Ava Max with “So Am I”, up 12 spaces from last week’s debut to #18.

Fallers

We have seven fallers and they can be set into three pretty distinct categories. First, we have the songs from Dave’s PSYCHODRAMA gradually making their way out, with “Disaster” featuring J Hus down five positions to #15 and “Streatham” falling eight positions to #22. Then, we have the songs affected by UK chart rules and the streaming cuts that songs with legs typically experience, with “Don’t Call Me Up” by Mabel collapsing down 13 spaces to #16 just as it makes its breakthrough in the US and “7 rings” by Ariana Grande thankfully being completely demolished as it moves down a whopping 22 spaces to #29. Finally, we have the expected yet somewhat premature songs clearing the way for a soon exit, like “Please Me” by Cardi B and Bruno Mars down eight to #25, “Nights Like This” by Kehlani featuring Ty Dolla $ign down five to #33 and “How it Is” by Roddy Ricch, Chip and Yxng Bane featuring the Plug down six to #40 (The faster the better).

Dropouts

We just have four of these this week, with “Juice” by Lizzo sadly making its exit from #38 off the debut, “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” by Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus finally leaving from #36, and two songs that never really took off, “Bally” by Swarmz and Tion Wayne from #40 and “wish you were gay” by Billie Eilish from #39, although the latter will probably rebound thanks to the album impacting next week. There are no returning entries so let’s get straight to the new arrivals—

FEATURED SINGLE

“Free Uzi” – Lil Uzi Vert

Produced by DJ L Beats

It’s weird to put Lil Uzi Vert in this section in particular, but I don’t think this song will ever chart considering Lil Uzi Vert’s main audience is probably using Spotify, and this track is only available through a YouTube video, SoundCloud and I think TIDAL because of course, why not? Anyways, Lil Uzi Vert signed a contract when he was young and offered money by DJ Drama, Don Cannon and their label Generation Now, a subsidiary of Atlantic. To cut it short, and to disregard all the drama (No pun intended) like the leaks, Uzi saying he’s going to retire music and “Wake up back in 2013”, him being cut off of NAV’s album due to label shenanigans, Lil Uzi Vert cannot release music when he wants to and has been revealing this info via depressing Instagram Live streams and to see him so defeated is kind of painful, so when I saw that Uzi released a song called “Free Uzi” I figured it wouldn’t be introspective and would be more of an anthem for young aspiring artists who are being shelved by their label... I now understand that 1.) That’s an incredibly niche market, and 2.) No, the song’s about having sex and shooting people. Using a beat ripped from a G Herbo track from 2012 to express his anger towards the label in the oddest way, using a pitched-up version of his voice (To the point where he kind of sounds like Playboi Carti). This song screams raw Uzi, and is a middle finger to his label by being relatively inaccessible in comparison with what the label would want Uzi to make for a comeback single. It’s got an entirely uncleared sample, an almost complete lack of ad-libs which are otherwise incredibly prominent in Uzi’s discography, a monotonous flow that instead of droning as it’s used for the entire song, becomes a mantra, the lo-fi video by some unknown director which is just Uzi smoking and performing really wacky, cute dances with his friends (And NAV) in a corner store, the very abrupt ending and some of Lil Uzi Vert’s more explicit sexual and violent lyrics, including an outrageous line about Colin Kaepernick – search it up, it’s pretty hilarious. It’s such a vengeance song against his label, and I never expect Uzi to be this furiously stubborn and willing to jankily put together a half-unfinished song just for the sake of making DJ Drama even more panicked. It’s an absolute joy to watch and listen to, and I hope it makes it onto Eternal Atake if that ever comes out. Oh, and:

I still watch Big Bang Theory, that’s the nerd in me

Yeah, no, that line’s inexcusable.

NEW ARRIVALS

#38 – “Pretty Shining People” – George Ezra

Produced by Cam Blackwood – Peaked at #12 in Scotland

So this is the fifth single from George Ezra’s second album Staying at Tamara’s because he can’t stop milking his most mediocre effort yet, and also Ezra’s sixth Top 40 hit overall. The record has been winning awards left and right so I don’t blame him for pushing this single – although it was already pushed a year back with a music video as a promotional single – and at least this song is generally pretty inoffensive, although Ezra’s voice sounds odder here than ever, and has a country twang to it that matches the production but does not fit in the slightest, although immediately it is not nearly as noticeable after just the first verse. Overall, this is actually just kind of a pathetic, plastic folk-pop song with some nice guitar licks in there, sure, and an electric guitar riff that is way too distant in the mix, with the hook being an overwhelming pile of absolute cheese that I haven’t heard since R.E.M.’s “Shiny Happy People”. I do appreciate how it is mostly live instrumentation, and I do love the steady drum beat here, but otherwise I wasn’t impressed the first time and it’s worse now that I know his hit song formula and that this “New” track follows it to an absolute T. It’s not awful, but I’d skip it. Next.

#32 – “Piece of Your Heart” – MEDUZA and Goodboys

Produced by MEDUZA

So, I feel this one needs some backstory. MEDUZA is an up-and-coming DJ collective or EDM producer band from what I can gather, and by up-and-coming I mean they literally have two songs available on their Spotify page, and one of them is a remix, so yes, this is technically the debut single from the Italian dance music band, and Goodboys? Well, it’s their debut single too, I’m pretty sure, as they have nothing except a picture up on their Spotify page. Looking at Genius, I now know that they are a London-based pop trio consisting of three producers and I’m assuming vocalists. Hm, two artists, both with no single released yet, collaborate for their debut single, so the only idea I have to base my expectations off is “EDM”, and yes, I suppose it is, and I actually quite like it, to be completely honest, more of a guilty pleasure – if you think those exist, of course. In reality, this is generic deep house that isn’t really much of a novelty or anything special, at least on the surface. The vocalists from Goodboys have very distinct British accents that make their repetitious hook sound hilarious, and I like the glitchy synths harmonising with the synths before the “Drop”, which, by the way, is one of the dudes from Goodboys vocalising the drop as if he was on that Radio 1 show where DJs have to guess their own drop, and it’s pretty cute if anything. Not only does it replicate the drop, which is nice in itself, but it really gives it a homegrown feel because it sounds like someone trying to sing along to it at home. Oh, and the melodies in the post-chorus are pretty gorgeous, and I love how the drop kicks in the second time with the stray snare before everything. Is it generic? Yes. Is it janky? Yes. Do I still like it? Hell yes. If you like this Loud Luxury brand of house-pop, this might just be for you.

#19 – “Keisha & Becky” – Russ and Tion Wayne

Produced by Gotcha Bxtch

So, when I say Russ, I mean Russ splash, a UK rapper known for his top 10 hit “Gun Lean”, which he lazily interpolates in his second Top 40 hit (and Tion Wayne’s third). I don’t mean the American rapper who everyone hates, and I made this distinction last time. Whilst it’s annoying, it’s separated on both Spotify and Genius as Russ splash so it’s not like it’s going to be confusing to a casual listener. Anyway, this is a song by two UK grime rappers known for faux-dancehall and trap bangers in which they talk about killing people, so how can they pull off trying to make some sort of love song? Well, they don’t. I don’t think I’ve heard a less sexy “Very sexy” in my life. In fact, there’s not really a synth melody to carry this song, just an ambient stock sound in the background with just heavy bass and trap percussion to give it much of a beat and honestly the stark minimalism really works. If you ignore the hook’s existence, Tion Wayne sounds as enthusiastic as ever and I’m starting to really love this dude’s charisma. He has an insane ad-lib that is just a really long screech on here as well, which I think is an explanation in itself to why I like this dude. The first half of the hook is exciting until, well, “Very sexy” (It isn’t), and when Wayne and Russ start trading bars it gets pretty fun, in fact Russ sounds pretty great on the song. His rapid flow and nasal delivery is a perfect fit, but honestly I can’t get over how it’s decidedly unsexy for a song about how Keisha and Becky are “Very sexy”, and makes no effort to be because it’s just a trap song about gang violence and attractive women like they all are, but there’s not really much storytelling to explain who Keisha and Becky are or anything, it’s just that one line that irritates the hell out of me, “Keisha, Becky, very sexy”. Like the rest of the song, it’s so bare minimum that it nearly works, but it still misses the mark for me. Sorry, Wayne, I’m excited to hear your next song, but Russ? He can go away, he’s kind of worthless, but I see some improvement.

#7 – “Fashion Week” – Steel Banglez, AJ Tracey, MoStack

Produced by Steel Banglez and TheElements

What Steel Banglez does is make these who’s-who collaborations between British rappers almost like he’s DJ Khaled, although in this case you can tell Steel Banglez actually co-produced the beat because he does have a signature style, which is trap with a sprinkling of dancehall... so, yeah, he’s a producer who just makes generic beats that everyone else makes, right? Why is he so big? Well, he’s kind of a pioneer, because he was one of the first to combine UK rap, dancehall and pop hooks as well as keeping that ruthlessness and bloodthirsty attitude of British trap, to great success. So, is he any good? Usually, no, he kind of sucks and his style does nothing for me. This one definitely has a Caribbean rhythm that I like but there’s not enough bass to make the beat really hit, and MoStack is an absolutely pathetic rapper who gives one of the worst performances I think I’ve ever heard in UK rap as he mumbles in his offbeat falsetto without a care, with the mix barely even caring enough to keep his vocals audible. Compare it to AJ Tracey, with a strong delivery, odd and urine-related yet actually witty wordplay, multisyllabic rhymes, and he’s on the same song and does the hook. If MoStack wasn’t on this and the beat had some more bass than it does, maybe this could have been serviceable, but especially with the awkward instrumental section, despite me personally liking the strings and AJ Tracey’s verse, I can’t like this as much as I want to.

Conclusion

Wow, not a great week, huh? Well, MEDUZA and Goodboys take away Best of the Week for “Piece of Your Heart”, even though I wouldn’t say it’s exactly great or even all that good. Worst of the Week obviously goes to Steel Banglez, AJ Tracey and MoStack for “Fashion Week”, but nothing else is even notable enough for Honourable or Dishonourable Mention. See ya next week, and free Uzi.