Daily Mad Max meta

[sapote]

So I was trying to think through how the Citadel could rewire its military strategy and its mythos as a force to be reckoned with after Immortan Joe's death, of course, because what else would I think about, and I was turning over the fact that it's both a very vulnerable and a very desirable military target.

And then I was thinking, well, in the movie there are at least two instances where characters use being vulnerable and desirable to draw potentially dangerous enemy forces in over their heads - when Valkyrie seriously puts herself in a cage on top of a tower, naked and alone, in an attempt to bait passersby into, I suppose, getting mugged by the surviving Vuvalini, and when Cheedo baits Rictus into an exposed position during the final confrontation by acting scared and helpless.

So wow, that would be a thing you could weaponize, wouldn't it, and it would also make a decent (gendered) myth: a kind of myth of the Siren city, off on the horizon, full of water and food and gasoline and run by women and it should be easy to invade, but that vulnerability is a fucking lie. You think you're big and tough and you try a frontal attack but your supply lines are cut off, you're harried from every direction by people who fade back into the desert when you try to turn to face them, your vehicles bog down in weird sand traps. Forces that try to invade the Citadel just never come back and no one who survives can put together a coherent story about what happened, because it was all really confusing. They're probably witches. Do not engage.

(I am imagining many strategy confrontations between Furiosa and (per thatyourefuse) Cheedo the Deceitful, who is really, really good at disorienting small armies. Furiosa is like "we could just. shoot them all. though." and Cheedo - once she's grown into her new title - goes, oh, no, we want about a fourth of them to limp back home babbling about crows and how they never saw it coming. We don't have the people or weapons or infrastructure to be unassailable, but we can be incredibly difficult, that's a different strategy entirely)

Anyway, I don't know how well it would hold together as a strategy, but it seems, at least, in character for the culture they're going to have. And I like the idea that your first mistake was thinking that you could invade them, and everything after that was a worse mistake.)

Comments

[thatyourefuse]

YES.

YES I LIKE THIS.

[sapote]

In scuzzy cantinas across the Vast people are like "the Citadel, eh? Full of hot women and plants, I might go over there with my boys and some big guns" and the bartender is like "HAHAH, mate, you fucking try it, just pay off your whole tab first because you are never coming back. Ask me how many people before you said that and maybe later we found a skull or two."

[thatyourefuse]

/bouncing and clapping

I LIKE THIS THOUGHT.

[sapote]

The bartenders keep some kind of souvenirs up on the wall of stuff that got left when people went at the Citadel. Some of it's actually skulls with crow shit on them, or a shred of blackened fenders. It's a little superstitious of them but also bartenders around the Vast get sick of macho assholes too.

[sapote]

Okay, re: warboy epic poetry: it turns out that I have hit my wall and it is neither meter nor content (though the content's. maybe a little cheesy) but is rather that I can't talk like a super macho Australian teenage boy now, let alone after the apocalypse. And they don't talk that much in the movie, so I can't get a sense of the cant. SIGH.

[sapote]

Magnificent in danger, and fearless of the flood
of the gasoline around him, and driven by the love of Valhalla, the lie, the scam for which they died, all the the warboys on the desert had the wool over their eyes,
the older order and a goiter tightening down on Nux’s neck
he tried to light the match, but the Splendid kept in check


... sigh. THEY HAVE NEVER SEEN WOOL. Do I need to get them a whole new vocabulary? That is a complex project. Maybe I should go back to plants.

[ambyr]

You are making me want to see this movie!

[sapote]

I COULD BE SAID TO HAVE ENJOYED IT. Lots of flashing, though, so you might want to wait for a small screen, not sure how you are with giant light-changes.

[toft]

Yes! I love this!

[sapote]

\o/ I am so happy to have a canon where my churny world-building brain isn't restricted to trying to figure out when and where two people made out and how they felt about it. There's so much to think about! It's so exciting! SALINE-TOLERANT ACACIA TREES. MILITARY STRATEGY.

Over on thatyourefuse's journal we were talking more about the religion/worldview/propaganda that might spring up around the Citadel and the Five, and I had this huge extended metaphor about how the outriders in the desert were the crows of Cheedo the Deceitful and the Citadel itself was the tree tended by The Dag whose roots fed on the bones of the invaders. Worldbuilding! I love worldbuilding so much.

[toft]

ooooooh! I'm curious about Cheedo the Deceitful - where does that name come from? Is it canon? I've never seen any of the other films.

[sapote]

It's complete fanon from conversation over at thatyourefuse's place - about how Cheedo was Cheedo the Fragile in-canon and then she used that reputation to con Rictus, so she's going to need a new title that reflects that yes, but it's canny and strategic fragility.

[toft]

Ah! I like it!

[hokuton_punch]

YES, ALL OF THIS IS EXCELLENT. :D