me, reading about women in Ancient Greece who could devote their entire lives to being a virgin priestess of hallucinogenic honey: god I wish that was me
Okay but what if the Dag was a war pup until puberty hit and she got “discovered.” Has someone written this already?
ETA: Scratch that WHAT IF SPLENDID WAS.
This headcanon makes so much sense on so many levels. Angharad’s scarification is reminiscent of war boy scarification. She’s reckless in a way that you’d expect from someone who spend their early years steeped in war boy culture. She is the spiteful mirror of a war boy – the war boy betrayed – pursuing life and freedom with the same fierce abandon that war boys pursue death and glory.
Angharad’s actions in the movie scream rebellion. She’s not just trying to escape Joe, she’s spray-painting a giant FUCK YOU on the door on her way out. As war boys fling themselves into danger for Joe’s sake, Angharad flings herself into danger for the sake of her sisters. She thrusts her body in front of Furiosa and stares Joe down head on, her eyes screaming:
WITNESS ME
Of course in addition to showing behavior similar to that of the war boys, she is also extremely sympathetic and empathetic towards the war boys. She insists on “no unnecessary killing.” When Nux breaks on to the rig and Furiosa moves to slit his throat, Angharad is the one to insist, “He’s just a kid at the end of his half life!”
Right before getting thrown out of the rig by the five, Nux yells “By [Immortan’s] hand we’ll be lifted up!” Angharad responds, “That’s why we have his logo seared on our backs! Breeding stock! Battle fodder!” Angharad sees the war boys as kindred spirits. It makes sense that she’d view them this way because she used to be one of them.
NOTE: bonehandledknife has made a lovely addendum to this post with links that help clarify the psychology behind a person:
recognizing fundamental problems in their worldview
realizing how they have perpetuated those problems prior to this realization and
coping with the radical change in perspective that results from these realizations.
Raised as any other war pup – she’d have been promised a future as a fierce warrior, destined to die gloriously and spend the afterlife seated at the right hand of her gleaming white God. Disillusionment would arrive when she came of age and Immortan Joe “discovered” her among his war boys, washed the paint off her face and press-ganged her into his harem. Her gleaming white God, now revealed as a horrible old man.
She has to re-think her entire worldview. She knows that death won’t bring her glory and Valhalla is a lie. She devotes herself to finding the Green Place, instead – a paradise not for the dead, but for the living. She rejects this world that rewards “black thumbs” for keeping lifeless machines running and embraces the idea of a world that rewards green thumbs and nurturers. She foreswears her father slaver and seeks out The Many Mothers.
.
Logistically, this scenario also gels with the film’s worldbuilding.
We already know that some of the stunt actors for the War Boys were, in fact, female [source], and that Furiosa is known by the masculine title Imperator instead of the feminine title Imperatrix [see: etymology], so it follows that people holding the title of ‘War Boy’ need not necessarily be boys.
I think we can safely assume that Immortan Joe’s white patriarchal misogynist militarized dictatorship is also cissexist. It’s not too far of a stretch to think that Joe equates womanhood with breeding/nursing. The vast majority of the women in his diseased population wouldn’t meet the health requirements for breeding/nursing. It follows that Joe would consider all children born to diseased parents /boys/ by default. Angharad would be the statistically improbable healthy child born of diseased parents.
It also fits in nicely with the narrative of Angharad and Furiosa. I got the feeling of them almost being the same type of person who had taken different paths. It’s almost like they’ve spent all their time in the Citadel just missing each other until they come together to plan their escape.
[choosing the short version of these discussions because of length]
So you know what, I keep thinking about this post, have been for weeks, so I’m finally gonna to make the post/point I keep wanting to make about this in that I keep being reminded of this poem in relation to War Boys in general and Furiosa in particular, and Angharad in this headcanon:
Which is basically about thanking your abusers for the skills that you gained to survive them. And that you shouldn’t.
Because whose skills are these, in the end, yours (because you honed those skills) or your abusers (who created the situation in which you’ve had to grow)?
There’s the idea floating around that Furiosa’s hand is representative of Joe’s rule and that she lost the hand when she tore off his face as meaning that her hand is related to his rule, but… is it? A hand is more often a sign/symbol of agency of ability; given Furiosa’s in-canon representation as a blackthumb, chances are she either made the hand herself or modified it greatly to suit herself. It’s something that is clearly used to survive living at the Citadel, and she lost it like she lost her crew and her title and whatever standing she scrounged together at the Citadel in the effort to defeat Joe, she threw it all at Joe to put him down, including her own life.
Does that necessarily mean that her metal hand is bad? Does that necessarily mean that any ability she had with that hand is bad, or that she should negate all ties with it?
Is the skill gained at using it wrong and should be discarded?
And the thing is… Furiosa had a Before. She had a foundation in skills and personality that was before she arrived at the Citadel.
What if she never had?
What if she grew up in that toxic environment and breathed it in and spread it all unknowing and then reacted against it in horror? Except… that’s not the Furiosa we’ve seen in the movie, it’s not the Furiosa that knows of a Green Place, that introduced herself as one of the Vuvalini, that knows how to shoot a rifle so that every bullet lands.
Someone who might have been, though, is Angharad. Angharad who climbed all over the War Rig because that was her childhood play place, who knows guns but then rejected loading them, who knows violence but then rejected the use of it and the power of it, who knows ‘who killed the world’ because she killed it herself.
I am interested in villains because I grew up being told I was wrong and a monster. I am interested in toxic abusive childhoods because I grew up in one. I am interested in villain turns good trope because I want to grow. I am interested in the moment that you realize your abuser is flawed, and all the betrayal and rage and hurt that follows and that the secret shameful terror you’ve felt all those very many days has a reason and the reason is that something other than you is flawed.
And I am interested in the ways that you try to craft your skills and your identity past your childhood, past a toxic foundation, and make your skills and your identity your own, and confronting the ‘you’ of your past.
This is why Furiosa is so interesting to me, because she rose up through the War Pups to get her own strength, why Nux’s arc is so compelling to me because he got his redemption, and why Angharad as a prior War Boy is so fascinating to me because she might have looked Nux in the face and went ‘oh god’ and she shoved him right off the War Rig because: no more.
No more will she be complicit. No more will she try to get approval by spreading the toxicity. No more will she be so blind.
And I know that this story isn’t everyone’s or for everyone, but this is what fascinates me. This is why I’m fascinated by Loki, and by William Fisk, and to a lesser extent, by Bucky Barnes, how your creation was your beginning and how your beginning was twisted, and how do you come back from that?
How do you own the skills you got under your abuser, how do you own the parts of yourself that was fed by them?
straight men trying to make Serious war dramas and accidentally making incredibly tender homoerotic cinema is the funniest thing
In his essay, “Masculinity as Spectacle,” Steve Neale seeks to extend Laura Mulvey’s work on the male gaze and to challenge her assertion that the male or male-identified spectator can never look upon the male body as an erotic object. To challenge Mulvey’s assertion, Neale identifies the mechanisms mainstream Hollywood cinema uses to represent the male body as erotic. One way of doing this, Neale argues, is by making the male body the target of violence. In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy – as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid’s naked flesh – as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege – as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover – as long as he is riddled with bullets. Violence makes the homoeroticism of many “male” genres invisible; it is a structural mechanism of plausible deniability.
The world’s tiniest dragon must defend his hoard, a single gold coin, from those who would steal it.
Suggestion: The dragon’s definition of “steal” is somewhat loose. It still allows the coin to be used and bartered and change hands–but on one condition: the dragon must be with it at all times.
They become a familiar sight in the marketplace.
“Here’s your change, ma’am. One gold piece.” The merchant holds out a palm, on top of which rests a tiny, brilliantly colored creature clutching a single gold coin.
“That’s a dragon,” you say dumbly. “One piece… and a dragon.”
“Yes.”
You cautiously reach out and attempt to take your change. You tug. It holds. You tug harder. The dragon lets loose a tiny, protective growl.
“Ma’am–no, ma’am, you have to take the dragon, too.”
“Sorry?”
The seller notes your dubious expression. “Not from around here, are ya?” They shrug. “Them’s the rules. Take the coin, take the dragon.”
They wait expectantly. Wondering how the world has so suddenly gone mad, you slowly, slowly hold out your hand.
The dragon perks right up. It scampers from their palm to yours with the coin clamped in its jaws and scales your sleeve with sharp little claws.
“Have a nice day, ma’am,” the merchant says. “Spend him soon, now, you hear? At another booth, if you can. He likes to travel.”
From its perch upon your shoulder, the dragon lets out a happy trill.
Bonus: the coin eventually passes to the rogue in a group of travelling adventurers. The dragon becomes the mascot of the entire group, and they lay out a small pile of coins for him to sleep on every night, clutching his coin like a teddy bear.
The Carving Witch 