Just thinking about all the layers of storytelling that go into Wasteland Weekend, and how hard it is to explain it to someone who’s outside that environment in a way that captures the magic and complexity of it.
Like, there’s canon: the world of Mad Max, Fallout and a couple other things that forms the basis for the aesthetic, some specific events like Thunderdome, and the general event worldbuilding.
There’s meta on that canon (where Clan of the Boltcutters got our name, for example), and where we extract a lot of the ideas from canon that are important to us.
Then there’s a layer that people tend to call lore: the story of your individual tribe at WW and your character within the event.
While there is some cosplaying at WW, most people are creating original characters for themselves within that world. So the whole event is sort of like a giant self-insert fic, or really many different ones going on simultaneously and drawing on different parts of the underlying canon. While there are some people who do go full on with playing a character, most of us are kind of just “me but in the Wasteland,” with varying amounts of Wasteland-appropriate backstory.
Different tribes’ lore varies a lot in amount of detail and how closely it attaches to canon. Clan of the Boltcutters is explicitly a post-Fury Road tribe of Vuvalini and others living in/around an integrated, post-revolution Citadel. We have a loosely-defined story about who we are, which gets embodied in our costumes, props, how we set up our camp and how we interact with other Wastelanders.
It’s a story that’s blurry around the edges and may vary slightly in the telling, coming in different versions (all of which are true) depending on who you ask, as things in the Wasteland are wont to do. But we’re basically continually writing a collective Fury Road extension fic that weaves our tribe into a hopeful version of a post-Fury Road Citadel–a version that occasionally borrows from, but is often quite distinct from, our own individual fic-verses on AO3 or wherever.
And then sometimes things that happen at WW get woven back into fics set in the world of the Citadel, like this one, and new friends we meet at WW get woven into our story as we go along, until the lines between all these layers get kind of blurry, and it all happens in a very organic and collaborative way that’s incredibly cool to witness but difficult to explain to anyone outside it. I remember someone in our tribe yelling to some of our new friends at one point, “You’re in the story now!” But we all are. We are the story and the story is us.
…And then there’s the layer where you’re collectively writing pun-filled explicit smut fic shipping other tribes’ gods. Because that was a thing that happened too.
And then there’s the things that happen at Wasteland that are stories all by themselves, if you think of them that way. We made a friend who cosplays as Angharad, and just the act of her walking into our camp and spending time with us made this into a story where Angharad lives – look, she’s right there in the post-REVolution Citadel!
We also have the Ace as a Wasteland friend, and he’s married to a Vuvalini – so obviously the Ace has survived the events of Fury Road and is now adorably coupley with his Vuvalini lady.
And every time we give packets of dried Citadel peaches and lizard jerky to warboys, every time we invite them and share our food and drink and shade with them, we are weaning them away from their toxic ideology just a little bit more, showing them that life can be different.
We are the story and so is everybody else and the story is all of us.
(…the two tribes whose gods we crack-smut-shipped are talking about a communal peace ritual next year that involves reading our.. uh… religious scripture… out loud.)
my favorite thing about this is that each of them is walking in a different direction, it’s like these girls are off to conquer the entire goddamn world
They’re gonna meet in the middle
In the middle they will find the avatar, master of all elements and the force:
Only 2 years ago, George Miller blew us away with Mad Max: Fury Road. Let’s take this second anniversary as an opportunity to witness what made the film such an awesome game changer.
from the article (emphasis mine):
Another characteristic that sets Fury Road apart in its genre
is the distinct lack of romance. Furiosa and Max never share a romantic
moment, even when the story could have easily made space for it. Their
connection is gripping in its intensity, as two characters with painful
pasts and bleak prospects come together to try for hope one last time…
and while it fuels some of the best fan creations on the internet, it’s
great that it isn’t canon. Fury Road is a rare instance in which a main female character holds her own without being a love interest.
“there used to be places
greener than this one,”
my mother whispers to me.
it feels like a secret,
so i tighten my grip around her hand
so she can continue speaking.
“there used to be places
where the sun could barely shine through,
the trees were tall,
and their cover wide enough to
protect you from heavy rain.”
i squint at the ground.
the Green Place is all i know.
beyond that,
there is only sand and desolation. though rain can be scarce,
somehow we keep this place alive,
for it is our livelihood.
“women,”
Mother says,
“are bound to this earth.
from it we emerged
and to it we shall return.
it may not be now,
it may not be tomorrow;
but until then,
we shall protect it
and be grateful for this gift.”
i nod in understanding
and close my eyes.
sometimes i can see myself
giving a part of my soul
to this land
in order to one day
become a seed
and witness it becoming much more.
someday, i will witness it.
///
witness my rebirth / a.m.
day 4 of poetry writing month (April 4th, 2017)
prompt from @kaylamansi, requesting Furiosa and the Green Place (hope this is fine!)
No, no, let’s talk about this more! I brought this up a while ago in regards to the music box Toast has during the final chase, but let’s talk about it! Because the costuming in this movie is so great and has a lot of meaning in it.
Up until they meet the Vuvalini, the Sisters have only been seen wearing their white “robes” (for lack of a better word). It looks like there might be some stolen shoes among them (the Dag has a pair, so does Capable) and maybe a wrist wrap (Capable), but otherwise they have essentially no adornment. Just their layers and layers of gauzy white fabric and a few braids in their hair. No jewelry, no pins, no rings, no real adornment, no real ornamentation. Just these wasteland bridal gowns (Angharad basically has a bridal veil over her head when she first sneaks into the cab of the rig, let’s not joke, and Cheedo deliberately dresses like a bride when she tries to go back to Joe). It reinforces the idea that they’re simultaneously important and unimportant–they’re dressed better than the Wretched but they don’t get to wear crowns or ribbons or badges. Joe sure likes to wear badges and ribbons and signs of office. Their plain dress reinforces the idea that they are, as Angharad says, “breeding stock.” It’s a uniform. It signifies what they are in Joe’s power-structure, not who they are as people (they’re not seenas people in that structure).
But as they progress, they shed more and more of their white clothes: Capable loses her scarf to Nux, the Dag stops wearing the little white cap, their clothes get stained for sure, Cheedo starts wearing a wrapped dress not so unlike Angharad’s, &c.
Events happen, as we all know, and they meet the Vuvalini (who are so important to me that I almost can’t articulate it). And by the time the sun has gone down after their meeting the Vuvalni, the Many Mothers have taken them in, given them shelter, made them welcome, and even given them clothing.
But more than clothing–because one could say, well, it’s the desert and it gets cold at night. You need to wrap up. But it’s not just clothing out of necessity. It’s ornamentation. It’s not just necessity but also, I think, what they want to wear. It’s symbolic in that regard. Capable started wearing a pair of goggles early on–a first step in this direction. And then the Vuvalini give them things like belts with pouches, woven and patterned headbands, capelets, patterned quilts, even outright jewelry like necklaces and fringed belts that serve no purpose but ornamentation. The Dag, when she talks to the Keeper of the Seeds, has an animal’s jawbone among other small objects tied into her hair with cords. She’s not wrapped in blankets for warmth or anything. She’s wearing a belt with a zillion pouches on it and ornaments tied into her hair. This is huge! This is important!
For one thing, it means that the Sisters have been accepted among the Vuvalini. They are dressing like the Vuvalini and being dressed by them. They’re wearing the same kinds of things–gifts, perhaps–and it makes them all of a kind. They’re essentially one community, sharing material items, food, ideas, and information.
For another thing, it makes the “wives” into individuals, not four women wearing what essentially amounts to a uniform that signifies “what” they are–now it’s about who they are.
They start off, all five of them, wearing these not quite identical but identifiably similar gauzy gowns. They end up, the remaining four, wearing piecemeal outfits with things that one hopes they chose or were given and that they themselves love. They are becoming, in this way, individual women with their own tastes and desires and opinions. Not that they weren’t before, of course, but this is finally an exterior manifestation of their interior lives.
Furiosa does not, it should be noted, adopt or go back to Vuvualini-style clothes. She keeps her Citadel “uniform,” though she wraps herself in a borrowed blanket that night (which, as some amazing posts point out, still makes her physically isolated in very important ways). In this way, she is still “outside” of her former community at this point, and she may remain “outside” for some time. It’s hard to say. But she’s definitely still in her old clothes when they set out across the salt. No additions there…
…in stark contrast to the newcomers to the Vuvalini, who are quite decorated and dressed up there on the bikes. And I love it. I love it.
So here’s another wrinkle: Cheedo strips off most of the things the Vuvalini have given her when she (seems to) beg Rictus to get her onto Joe’s vehicle. But she doesn’t strip off all of it–just the most obvious parts. It looks for all the world like she’s given up and gone back to Joe–she’s even gone back to how he would dress her. But she’s still wearing a necklace from the Vuvalini–so she hasn’t given it all up, as she makes plain just a few moments after (but it’s a great moment given her actions after Angharad died: smeared lipstick and veil and all).
So all these ornaments and headbands are these tangible things that break the Sisters from their former existence and connect them with these other women and all the history they carry among themselves. It’s a sign of separation from what they were and of progressing into what they are and will be. They take on a new appearance as they take on new roles.
(Another argument could be made that the Vuvalini hold things in common, which would be in direct opposition to the repeated imagery of ownership and control that appears everywhere else in the film [“that’s my wheel” “my treasures” the chastity belts the bank vault door, “that’s mine!” &c]–and that’s a post for another time too.)
I want a scene where we see the Vuvalini laying things out and telling the Sisters who the pieces used to belong to and giving them a little Vuvalini history lesson as they choose.
Steel Phoenix Studios 