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[imperior]

( PLAYER ★ INFORMATION )

NAME: Donna
AGE: 27
CONTACT: iamthespacecadet@plurk
CURRENT CHARACTERS & LATEST AC: NA

RESERVATION LINK: Here

( CHARACTER ★ INFORMATION )

DOES THIS CHARACTER MEET SKELETAL BASICS? yes
NAME & AGE: Furiosa, approximately late 20's - early 30's
CANON & CANON POINT: Mad Max: Fury Road, post film
CANON INFORMATION: Wiki

PERSONALITY:
Furiosa is a warrior, strong, independent, fierce and quick and ruthless, forged in an unkind world, adapted to her situation so well that she became the best and worst of a tyrannical war lord’s servants. She is a woman in a world of men who clawed herself into a rare position of power, in a society where people are viewed as things, and women as property. Throughout her life in the citadel, Furiosa built a reputation as a perfect warrior - a cold, fearless woman as hard as stone who raised herself to a position of power and influence through blood and sweat and tears, both her own and others.

It's also not true.

Because while Furiosa is undoubtedly fierce, powerful, and incredibly angry, under her leather-hard skin she's also vulnerable, scared, and capable of great kindness. She is broken, but she is trying to fix it. When we first meet her at the beginning of Fury Road, she's already part way through her hero’s journey, fleeing the Citadel with the Immortan's wives stowed away in the belly of the War Rig, having finally decided with their help that enough was enough. Rebelling against the man and the society that took everything from her. What happened before feeds into what happened after, the story of her fall and her rise.

Furiosa wasn't born in the Citadel or in the wasteland surrounding it. She was born in the Green Place, a land filled with life ruled by the Vuvalini, the many mothers - a matriarchal society, peaceful for the most part, but strong enough to defend themselves. Her name, even then, was Furiosa, hinting at her fierce nature. And while clearly Furiosa views the land of her childhood as close to ideal as you can get, a story that motivates the wives and gives hope for a better future. that doesn't mean it was a wholly gentle place full of gentle people. We know this because she recognizes the trap the Vuvalini set in the wastes, the trick to lure people in- a woman acting as bait, a trap ready to spring. We know this because anything good must be protected. It's not some new thing they came up with to deal with the loss of the Green Place. It's old knowledge, and the women she meets are hard and they're strong and she doesn't seem surprised by it. She doesn't seem to expect them to be gentle or soft. So it's very likely she was always a warrior in some way or another, even when she was young. Even her expertise with a rifle, the favored weapon of the Vuvalini, suggests she was never the most gentle of souls. But gentle or not, it was a place of food, green, water, and love. Under the protection of these women is where she lived until the day she was taken as a child, along with her mother, by the men of Immortan Joe. She was whole and perfect, a prize catch. Her capture was the beginning of a string of loss, and three days later her mother died, leaving her alone in a terrible place full of terrible people.

Regardless of what she was before, there's little doubt of what she becomes later. Through interviews and nods and a certain level of logic we know she was taken for a specific reason. Furiosa was healthy, full life, beautiful, at one point, and she became one of Immortan Joe's wives. Not wives as we know them now, but women owned and possessed for a single reason, to produce healthy sons for a rotting man who took her from her home, and despite the false gilded luxury of the cage they were kept in, all of the wives, including her, needed strength to survive. And she did. Although we don't know much about this young Furiosa, what she was like then, we know that.

Eventually she was left to her own devices in the Citadel, cast aside. Instead of ending up among the the wretched, the dying people who cluster around the base of the Citadel, she found herself with the War Boys, Joe's army of aggressive child-soldiers. Half-life boys who are dying by the time they're born and whose greatest wish is to go out in a blaze of glory rather than die, soft and quiet. The war boys live in relative squalor. In the dark, with the machines, feeding off the blood of others to keep them alive one more day. They are creatures of cruelty because they know nothing else, their only idea of affection Immortan Joe’s poisonous lies. And there's a distinct hierarchy, from War Pups to Lancers to Drivers to Imperators, everything in between. That's where Furiosa found herself, and instead of falling down she stood up. She stripped away the layers of herself that made her any different from them. She shaved her head and she painted her skin and she became harder than she already was. She didn't die. She survived in a world that was hostile and cruel, and she did more than just survive. Furiosa had a strong enough will to force her way through it, to claw her way to the top, to learn and to excel at fighting, driving, and fixing the machines that are the backbone of Joe’s army.

Will is a defining feature of her character, possibly the defining feature. Beyond her capacity for ruthlessness and her ability for kindness, there is this: she refused to die. She refused to lay down and quit. She has struggled and she has overcome and she never quite managed to give up hope. She has come close, but who could blame her? Her life has been a series of loss and pain and humiliation. She lost her home, her mother, her body, her freedom, and very nearly her humanity. But she still fought. It brings her to a kind of single-minded focus, intent on overcoming obstacles. Capable of coming up with a plan and following through with it even when things go sideways. Even when she gets unlucky, which is frequently, she grits her teeth and she pushes on and she refuses surrender. So when the war party is on her earlier than expected, she keeps driving, telling not just the unaware War Boys on her crew, but herself to "Fang it," to keep going forward. When the War Boy Nux drives his car in front of her rig, she runs him down. And when a stranger comes out of the desert she refuses to let him come between her and her life and the freedom of the girls she took with her. She fights, and she very nearly kills him.

Part of this ability to survive shows through in her adaptability. This isn’t an uncommon trait for anyone who has had to struggle to survive in her world. There’s never enough of anything, so you have to learn to use what you have to get what you need. Furiosa does it better than most, making do well enough to become a respected mechanic, possibly the best in the Citadel. Her prosthetic arm spells that much out in her body- built from cast off parts, capable of performing many different tasks, ugly but economical.

It’s not just adaptable, she’s also pragmatic and practical. Capable of looking past distractions to find the root of problems and deal with them. So after Max steals the War Rig and it shuts down in the middle of the desert, she's willing to bargain with him, despite the fact she had tried to kill him not minutes before. Trying diplomacy, which is not her strongest suit. First with logic, “You’re sitting on 2000 horsepower of nitro-boosted war machine. I’d say you’ve got about a five minute head start.”, and then with a little more impatience, staring at the muzzle covering Max’s mouth before adding, “You want that thing off your face?”. When a harpoon rips away the steering wheel from the Rig and Max's hand is crushed, her first thought after he is freed is to deal with the fact that they can’t steer. She reaches down without a second thought to her supply of tools to grab a monkey wrench, locking it around the bolt of the steering column, so that they can avoid crashing. Later, when Cheedo runs back, trying to get to a pursuing bike, she doesn’t argue with the heartbroken girl like the other wives do. Instead she just shoots down the driver, and at the end of their journey, when Immortan Joe slams the rear of his vehicle into the rig, blocking their way, she gets out of her seat, bleeding from her chest, and tells Nux: "I'm going to need you to drive. I'll get him out of our way.". It’s situations like this where her will and her adaptability come together. She is harsh, because necessity dictates she has to be in order to first survive and then in order to protect the wives and her allies.

Throughout the film she fights, and she does it with rage in her heart. She's angry that she has to be frightened. She's angry about what has been done to her. She’s angry about what has been done to those girls, to the people of this world, and that there are things that are trying to stand in her way. So, with Max pointing a gun at her and the wives, threatening to ruin her plans, she takes the first opportunity she gets to jump on him, unarmed, and take him down. She screams and tears into him, her messy, brawler-like fighting style a reflection of her anger. And it doesn't take a full fight for her to show her rage. When the fuel pod starts dragging behind the rig, slowing them down by seconds she slams on the wheel and shouts. When Nux attacks her she holds a knife to his throat as the girls hold her back, snarling into his face- "This warboy wants me dead!" She yells into the face of her fellow Imperator when he tries to frighten her before she smashes her forehead into his nose and throws him under the wheels. While she is often quiet and still, a direct counterpoint to the nervous, twitching Max, her stillness isn’t a sign of some inner peace or a lack of emotions. It’s a carefully honed mask of steel, forged under years of Joe’s rule. She's had to be good at hiding her feelings because she's had to serve a man she hates. The quiet is a defense that lets people hear what they want to, and it hides a whirlwind of emotions, which, when set free, snap out at the world with vicious force. She lashes out with her rage, as much of a weapon as the rest of her. Her still, predator patience is different from Max's frenetic energy, but she is equally dangerous and dedicated to survival. Their writers describe them as being “...like two primal animals that are at the top of their game….”.

Furiosa’s anger is not just at the world and the people who control it, but at herself and what she’s allowed herself to become. Survival or not, she can’t forgive herself for serving Joe, or for her actions under him. Imperators live far better than most of the other people of the citadel, and she didn't earn this position through kindness, It wasn't simply given to her. knowing how Joe's army functions it is easy to tell Furiosa has done horrible, inhuman things. They take people and they treat them like things and they use them up, and she was a part of that. She tells Max clearly, when he asks what she's looking for: "Redemption." She knows that she needs to earn forgiveness for the things she’s done. And she’s ready to try.

Her anger serves another purpose. It protects her from despair. She couldn't let herself give into sorrow, because it freezes you. It makes people give up, and giving up is the same as dying, and she isn’t ready to die. So when she discovers that almost all of her people are dead, the home she has been searching for is gone, and that she’s led those girls into nothing but sand and salt, she howls her rage into the sky, because it's that or despair. It's a good sturdy armor against most things. Against the facts: her mother is dead, the one thing this society valued in her she wasn't even capable of, they stole her for no reason, she has done unbearable things. A worthy defense against the reality of her life.



But like most armor, it protects you but it also keeps you from connecting with other people. It separates you. Furiosa is desperately alone. She has no home among the War Boys, who she lives among but also above- strong and straight backed and powerful and independent because weakness among them is like blood in the water and any sign that she’s less than loyal could get her killed. She also isn’t a part of the close circle of the wives, even though she cares for them. And she does care for them, deeply,driven near to tears by the loss of Angharad, turning to Max and demanding to know for sure that there was no saving her- "Did you see it?" She repeats the question and waits for him to face her so she can see the truth in his eyes before she accepts that Angharad had gone under the wheels, even though turning back would put them all in danger. Later she is equally desperate after Joe steals Toast away, leveling him with a look that is beyond murderous as he taunts her with Toast’s presence in his vehicle. Perhaps partly her feelings are a result of the sting of failure, perhaps they’re partly the black marks on her own search for redemption, but it's hard to imagine it's just that. But even though she cares for them she’s separate from them, as noted by the creators in The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road: “... she’s been really shut off from them. They absolutely trust her, but I don’t think they sit on her lap and chat about the old world." The closest she gets to an equal she can relate to, someone who isn’t better than her, which is how she views the wives, or worse than her, which is how she views the men she's lived with for most of her life, is Max. He is a man whose name she doesn't even know, but who she refused to drop when he falls from the rig, even after she is stabbed in the chest. Even when it would be infinitely more simple to let him fall. Someone who has has also known pain, and has also done horrific things, and who was branded and whose agency was stripped away by Joe, same as her.

Their relationship is a frail and thin thing, despite her assuring the Vuvalini he's reliable. And her conversations with him are some of the few times she seems even slightly vulnerable. It’s a step forward in being willing to connect with other people. To try to be more than she has been. The evolution of this connection happens over few days but in clear steps. Not long after she tries to kill him, when they have to ride into the canyon with the full knowledge it is an excellent place for an ambush, she knows she might need his help, so she chooses to trust him even as he points a gun at her and the other women. She gives him with the code to the rig, because it’s better to have some hope than none. When he follows through instead of abandoning her to her fate as he had not long before, he hands her a gun and there is a flash of certainty on her face as she knows she chose right. Throughout the journey they extend trust and return it. until what seems like the end of the line, when they find what’s left of the Vuvalini, Joe left far behind. The end of the necessity of working together. It's then that she show her hand most clearly. She doesn't need him to survive on the path she intends to take across the sands, so it's a choice to make a human connection, to engage, when she comes to him and says "One of those bikes is yours. Fully loaded. You're more than welcome to come with us." The words seem simple, but from her they're not. She's a woman of few words. quiet and concise, but she says them honestly, softly, with the edge of hope to her voice. She wants him to come with them. She's been isolated for a long time, and now she doesn't want to be. He doesn't say yes, but he later returns and they end up going back to the citadel to fight. together. They know each other for a handful days. During those days they go from trying to kill each other to defending each other and risking almost everything to save each other’s lives. Through these actions the differences between them are taken down and they are able to stand as two warriors searching for some kind of redemption, together, with a mutual understanding of each other. It’s the first time she’s had the chance to build a relationship like this since she was a child, and while she doesn’t leap at it, exactly, she allows it. She engages.

With all this will, rage, and isolation, where does kindness come in, for a woman like this? She doesn't leave the wives, and she gets plenty of chances. She could have left Joe without them, and faced less challenges along the way. She could have taken Max up on his initial offer, to board the rig without them. She didn’t have to throw her own body over Cheedo’s in the bog, protecting the girl who could only stand there aghast at the idea of anyone shooting at her, and when she insists the girls stay together after the loss of Angharad, with something close to panic in her voice, it isn’t all logic. She was a slave under Joe, but a well cared for and powerful slave. His other Imperators remained stringently loyal to him, willing to die for him, and she didn't. She couldn’t forget what had been done to her and wipe away her past, and she couldn’t leave those women to be treated as objects, property, by the same man who had torn her away from her people. They provided the catalyst she needed to so something her soul required to heal. Throughout the creation of fury road the writers discuss the idea that only love can heal, that only engaging with people and becoming part of their lives could help you fix what was broken, stating in The Art of Mad Max: Fury road that “as you become engaged, healing can happen, emotionally and spiritually”. Mostly they are talking about Max, but they're also talking about Furiosa. She makes herself part of these women's lives, puts her own at stake, and helps them free themselves. This is turn allows her to return to her own people who similarly welcome them in and wrap themselves up in these women's lives. Bonding.

It’s the first time you see Furiosa at anything like peace. When she finds her people again she becomes softer, more at ease.. She smiles, her voice is warm. She introduces herself, a string of affiliations and lineage, before she adds, all relief, "It's me." In their presence she remembers parts of herself she'd forgotten- reconnects with her past, with the community she had once been apart of. She recalls their bare religion and their belief in hope. This moment of peace doesn't last long, a few simple words tearing away of her childhood dream of return to an ideal land, but it's the seeds of what she would earn by the end of the movie: redemption, peace, a chance for her, the wives, and the whole Citadel to move forward and start to heal. She takes the opportunity to change things, and to fix what's broken.


COURT ALLIANCE & REASONING:
Unseelie- Furiosa is a woman who once allied herself with a man, swore allegiance to him, wore his symbol and saluted him with the V8. Then one day she stole from him the people he thought belonged to him, leading him on a chase through the desert, eventually killing him with her own hands. And although Immortan Joe was a man of war and madness, he also represented the order of her land. But he made her a slave and he locked her up. The belief in freedom runs strong through her, as she was born to a people who live under no man’s thumb, as does the urge to affect change through transformation. While originally it was enough to just flee Immortan Joe’s rule and kick him where it hurts in the process, she eventually turned back around and tore down his rule, changing the Citadel with one swift death. She has a passionate heart, filled with wrath, and she would value the lives of her people and her world, willing to fight to save them.

ABILITIES:


"She proves herself as warrior and mechanic and driver. She has the trifecta of usefulness in this brave new hideous land, and so she's earned the driving of the war rig."


Survivalist: Like anyone who lives in the Wasteland, Furiosa is used to having little to nothing and making the best out of it, which still isn’t very good. She knows how to survive storms, go along while without food or water, and has very little regard for things being ‘gross’

Scavenger: Capable of utilizing tools beyond their intended purpose. She can create a wheel from a spanner and an arm from a children’s toy motor. Her world is not one where you can swing by the store for a new so-and-so. You have to make do.

Mechanic: Speaking of, she’s one of the best, if not the best, of Joe’s mechanics. She can keep the rig running long past the point it should have died. She knows machines in and out. She built her own arm (with one hand) and she maintains her weapons. While she’s not technologically advanced, she’s skilled at knowing the mechanics of a thing. What makes it move, if not what makes it work.

Driver: She’s also an excellent driver. She’s a vicious mind behind the wheel, capable of turning a vehicle into a weapon, and she knows how to get the most out of a machine, learning its ins and outs nearly to the point of affection.

Warrior: She can throw a mean punch. With either fist, or what’s left of her arm. Or maybe an elbow to the face? To the gut? A forehead to break your nose, a kick to the chin, a knee to the chest. She’s not a flashy fighter. She doesn’t flip around or do tricks. What she does is knock someone down and beat them until they don’t move anymore. Its a messy, low, dirty kind of fighting, and she’s quite adept at it.

Weapons Master: Also she can stab you. Or throw a knife at you. Or hit you with a crossbow bolt. Or blow you up. Or choke you with a chain. Or shoot you. While she doesn’t have much experience with more finesse weapons like swords (or the second hand for a bow) she’s adept at most simple bludgeoning weapons, knives, lances, crossbows, and guns.

Marksman: She’s a crack shot, especially with a rifle, especially at a distance. Move over Max Rocktansky. Or don’t move. Don’t even breath.

INVENTORY:
1 Set of Imperator Armor (as seen here, sans her prosthetic)
2 Small Leather Pouches with Miscellaneous small tools and parts

( WRITING ★ SAMPLES )

NETWORK SAMPLE:

[There's a long, distinct pause between when Furiosa gets the Locket open and chooses the audio function- a small portrait of a serious looking woman with short cropped hair for a second too long- and when she begins to speak. When she does it's stilted, as if she expects some delay or echo, but otherwise her tone is flat and even.]

It's said that machines don't work here, for more reasons than a lack of guzzoline.

[Another pause as she redirects, towards something more pointed.]

I'm looking for answers. Why things stop working. Ways around it. [The portrait doesn't match itself to the narrow lines of her mouth, but there's enough impatience in her voice now that it doesn't need to.

It didn't make sense to her. Some things worked, crossbows, mills. But there was a line, and nothing seemed to cross it. It wasn't curiosity. Her left arm hanging loose at her side was a matter of survival.]

There's things that should work, if they're put together right, so why don't they? If you know, tell me. If you know some other way to get things working again, I'll take that too.

LOG SAMPLE:
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