It is easy — terribly easy —to shake a man’s faith in himself.
To take advantage of that to break a man’s spirit is the devil’s work.
–George Bernard Shaw
Train or talk about martial arts and self-defense long enough, and someone will invariably want to test you. It’s usually annoying or amusing to varying degrees, depending on the person’s attitude, but it can sometimes be frightening.
I’ll talk about that frightening aspect next month. This time, I want to talk about a specific sort of challenge most often laid down before the new student whose combination of budding knowledge and excited inexperience makes them vulnerable to emotional undermining.
It happens early on in training, usually in the first month or two. A student who has been doing well walks into class with a little less confidence. A little less enthusiasm. Why?
“Sensei, my boyfriend wanted to see me do that wrist escape we learned last week, and it didn’t work!”
This sensei hates when this happens. The disappointment and self-doubt in a student is painful to see, and even more painful for the student to feel. All the student’s excitement over learning something new—the poise of gained confidence in one’s ability—broken down in a few minutes by someone who professes to care.
I hate it. I hate with vim and passion.
It isn’t always a boyfriend. It might be a husband, father, mother, sibling, or school classmate. But no matter the role, the person sees themselves holding the same position: a superior whose station must be reinforced, and whose station is threatened by the student’s sense of consent-based self-determination.
Oh, sure, some of those folks will claim the most-est and best-est of intentions.
“I don’t want you to have a false sense of security.”
“You need to know you can’t always win.”
“I just want to be realistic.”
And sometimes the comments are more direct and honest.
“I told you that karate stuff wouldn’t work.”
“Don’t start thinking you’re all that special.”
“You’re pretty stupid, thinking you can beat me.”
But no matter the spoken reason, the underlying motivation is almost always the same:
“To prove myself stronger and smarter, I must prove you are weak, incapable, and less worthy.”
Yes, I hate it.
*****
Teaching self-defense as a years-long curriculum accessible to students of diverse ages and abilities requires deliberation and forethought on a different scale than a weekend empowerment workshop. (Not better or lesser, mind you. Just different.) So one of the first things I teach students under the “self-defense” topic is a collection of basic hold escapes—what to do if someone grabs your wrist, elbow, shoulder, or shirt front.
The simple techniques teach a skill, certainly, but also the rules and expectations of working with a partner. Students also learn the principles of leverage and torque, grounding and balance, general body awareness, and the connection between the decision to take action and the resulting consequences.
Hold escapes are a very big deal.
I and my more senior students are always the students’ first partners. Once the basic maneuvers of a escape are taught sans contact, we start grabbing students. We start off with the tight grip and quick release meant to build competence and confidence. The better the students’ technique, the more difficult we make it to escape, and we adjust it for each student. The goal is to encourage, and require, progressive improvement.
We set and enforce standards, and most importantly, tell students to not only respect their boundaries, but to enforce their boundaries with calm skill.
It’s called “teaching.”
Then comes the moment the student, excited and confident, goes home to a person who isn’t all that excited, let alone passing supportive of the student’s martial arts training. That person listens to the student talk about the cool wrist escape she learned just an hour or so ago. And that person sees the opportunity to prove their own superior strength.
So that person offers to be a “partner,” and grabs the student’s wrist with as much force as possible (and usually with a grip or angle the particular wrist escape isn’t designed to counter). The student struggles. The student, who has known the technique for all of a couple hours, and practiced the technique a couple dozen times at the most, fails to break the full-power, all-strength hold of their supposedly supportive partner.
That “partner” happily reinforces the student’s sense of failure and weakness.
The student feels like a failure.
The other person feels fantastic, having confirmed their superiority.
I. Hate. This.
Truly, the person who feels the need to subjugate a person they supposedly love and care for is, in my eyes, the weak and frightened one. It’s the person who’d mock a teenager for learning the difference between the gas and brake pedal before speeding onto an ice-covered highway. It’s the person who thinks it’s funny to drop someone into a warzone before they’ve learned how to load a rifle. It’s the jerk who believes proof of strength lies in how well they can beat up someone in handcuffs.
It’s punching down.
It’s weakness.
It’s pathetic.
So… after a year or so of teaching, and seeing this drama play out over and over, I made a couple alterations to the lessons.
Yes, I still teach hold escapes. Yes, I teach them with the same limitations.
Then I tell the students the truth: “Someone is going to test you. Someone will want to see if you can really, truly, escape. And someone will want to prove you can’t do anything at all. If you try the hold escape, and it doesn’t work, it isn’t because you failed. It’s because the person holding you thinks they have to beat you. And that person thinks your fear of hurting them is greater than your fear of being hurt by them.”
Really, that’s the truth of it. I’ve seen it in the smirks and eyerolls these “supportive” partners give when the student explains to me the hold escape didn’t work.
The Snarky Partner depends on your passivity. She wants you to hesitate. He wants you to be afraid of trying. She wants you to let a loud-mouthed person prove his superiority. He wants to demonstrate his strength is really oh-wow cool. She wants to make certain you doubt your strength and courage. He wants to demonstrate how unworthy and incapable you are of determining consent. The Snarky Partner wants, above all else, to undermine a person’s confidence in self-direction, self-defense, self-determination.
And it doesn’t matter if the Snarky Partner doesn’t actually, deep-down wish you harm. Because all those things the Snarky Partner wants to prove are the same the attacker wants you to believe: you’re weak, you’re unsure, you’re not worth your own fight.
*****
It isn’t unusual for the Snarky Partner to be the one who accompanies the student to the dojo. In my experience, the Snarky Partner sometimes goes to great lengths to ensure they’re in attendance because they want to watch the class—to see what the students are taught, how the students are taught, and to find out “tricks” that can be used to encourage a student’s failure.
Whenever possible, I hold my Snarky Partner speech right in front of the watching family and friends. (Once, I even took the empty center seat in the front row of the observation area because one parent had, week after week, demonstrated his inability to understand by yanking his small son around and laughing at him.) I’ll talk specifically and thoroughly about the Snarky Partner, how to counter that person, and—most importantly—how to either dismiss them as irrelevant or use them as a self-teaching opportunity.
That’s usually enough to end the home-based Snarkers.
But out in real life, where it’s possible you’ll encounter a person who needs to bolster their own ego at another’s expense, chit-chats from Sensei don’t much work.
If my students are children, I must tread a bit carefully for numerous reasons. They might have abusive parents I haven’t yet sussed out (and I’ve sussed out more than a handful, my darlings), so I must keep in mind the consequences a child might face if they resist a parent. They might face a challenge at school, where defending one’s self against physical attacks is considered horrifyingly dangerous and grounds for suspension or expulsion. They might lack the support of a backbone-empowered adult (like the father who let his son be beaten up, day after day and year after year, because he was afraid they’d be sued if his son fought back).
So I tell them this: “Karate is something to be proud of, but not something to brag about. If you tell people you know karate, some bad person will try to prove you don’t. It’s better if you keep your knowledge here, at the dojo, and don’t try to show off to others. But if you are ever afraid, and if you ever have questions, you come talk to me, and I promise to keep what you tell me safe. And if you have to use your karate to really, truly defend yourself, I will back you up. Just remember that the longer you’re here, the more you’ll learn, and every person who is a sensei wants to help you because we were all white belts, too.”
If my students are all adults, I tell them something with a bit more… oomph.
I tell them about Snarky Partners and their usual motives. As you might guess, I almost always have at least one adult student who’d like to explain why a Snarky Partner doesn’t really mean to be snarky.
“Could they see you were upset?” I ask.
“Well, yes. But it was just a joke!”
“Were you laughing?”
“Well… no…”
“Then smack ’em upside the head to make them stop!”
There is often some awkward laughter at this point—mostly over the idea of inflicting a small amount of physical discomfort on someone.
So I add this: “The Snarky Partner is hurting you and shaming you. There is nothing morally wrong with making them stop. And if that person thinks it’s all right when they hurt you, and not all right when you stop them, you need to think about what that means to you and your children.”
Yes, I do indeed say that—flat out, without mumble-speak censoring.
Because it is true. Because I hate seeing folks who ought to be supported and encouraged have to instead explain away the overbearing snickering of someone who is being mean.
Some Snarky Partners really don’t understand what they’re doing to their partner/child/spouse. They do indeed think dragging a weaker person around is just plain funny. And a subset of these folks take well to being told and will change their behavior. I’ve even had a boyfriend approach me to ask the best way to help!
Those are the easy ones. The tough cases require a bit more of a direct approach. So I go on to explain one of the foundational concepts of successful self-defense: you don’t have to make an attacker let go. You can instead motivate them to let go.
Ram the heel of your hand—the hand they’re not holding—right between their eyebrows or under their chin. Or grind your knuckles into the back of the hand holding you. Or set your foot on the side of their knee and say you’ll kick if they don’t let go. Or just give them an open hand slap across the mouth. Yank on an ear. Poke them in the armpit. Spit.
No, the Snarky Partner will not be expecting any of those things.
They might try to tell you that as a way of excusing the fact they let go, to make you feel bad for making them stop their bad behavior. They might even fall back on, “That’s not fair!”
Which… Oh, ye gads.
Really, my darlings, I cannot even force myself to write about that piece of ridiculousness.
Y’see, self-defense isn’t about being stronger and tougher than an attacker, or even working some clever technique against an attacker. It’s about doing what the attacker doesn’t expect and gaining the few precious seconds you need to escape. But most importantly, it’s knowing—deep down and without a doubt—that you are worth defending. That you’re worth your own defending, and you don’t need someone else to defend you in order to understand your own value.
The Snarky Partner doesn’t like that much.
They can go on not liking it for as long as they wish.
You don’t have to go on with them.
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On Saturday, I ran the Whidbey Island Half Marathon, just outside of Seattle. It was an absolutely beautiful race. The weather could not have been more perfect, the scenery was pure ocean and Puget Sound and mountain ranges and forests, and even the water tasted good. Plus, I PRed, with a time of 2:01:19! Which, to be honest, was completely unexpected. But I suppose these things can happen when you least expect them.
This race had a lot of cool firsts for me: - The farthest I’ve ever traveled for a race (850 miles) - First time I didn’t listen to music at all - First time I ran with a buddy (Lauren) for the whole race
And look at all these other personal records Strava found!
That’s not actually my 10K PR, just to set the record straight. It’s just the fastest 10K that Strava knows about.
But in reality, the race was so much more than that. And the end was not pretty at all.
Training
Let’s back up a bit. The 12-week training plan for this race started in late January, but at that time I wasn’t even running. I had ankle problems, which I believed to be a peroneal nerve issue, and that caused me to skip the Hot Chocolate 15K in San Francisco. I had to take some time off from training, and it was a bummer to miss that race, but I was determined to be smart about my training. No need to push through the pain early on. It’s a half marathon, not a sprint ;)
I roughly followed this Hal Higdon training plan, starting at week 3, once my ankle felt better. Along with the help of my fantastic trainer, Angela Tieri (check her out if you’re in the Bay Area — she is wonderful, and such an inspiring runner), I followed the advice of “don’t start running again until you can’t even remember you had an injury.” Once that was the case, we got to work on the stability issues around my left knee. Angela also helped me power through some intense workouts (can you say long-jump burpees?) that made me feel like a warrior. This training regimen felt smart, even without a ton of mileage volume. I could feel myself getting stronger every week.
Doing some ball work at the end of a session. Circus-y!
However, the training was not to be so blessed. I was beset with many other setbacks. Ankle problems and residual knee issues contributed to reoccurring hip flexor strain mid-way through. Then I strained a lat in one of my solo weight-lifting sessions, and it came back to haunt me as lower back pain. On top of all that was some emotional strain — I went through a crushing breakup about a month before the race. As a result, what was supposed to be a 9-mile run became a 6-mile run, and a couple of 20 mile weeks turned into ice cream and phone calls with my mom. Not to mention the lack of speed or hill workouts. I thought I would just run Whidbey for fun, with no goal time. A PR seemed out of the question.
As the race week approached, my left ankle started acting up again, in the weirdest way. It would hurt if I sat for too long, but felt better after shaking it out walking or jogging. I took this as a sign to push through the rest of the training plan. My last long run was done in the rain, while hungover, but I was proud that I completed it. Tapering, the savasana of running, was a welcome physical respite. Now, it was time for the mental prep.
Race day prep
The plan was to travel and stay with a few of my close friends, Lauren, Doug, and Maria, on Whidbey Island, and run the race on our own. I flew into Seattle on Friday afternoon and met Lauren for dinner at her house. We ate, drove up to Whidbey, and spent some time helping each other pick out outfits for tomorrow.
Lauren on the left, me on the right. You’re never fully dressed without a smile, and a shiny tat.
Doug and Maria arrived shortly after, and then we all discussed coffee and morning plans. We put on some shiny temporary tattoos for good luck. The alarm clocks were set for 4 am. Gulp.
One of my favorite things about racing is the zone that you get into when it’s time. The days surrounding the race are like a different world. It’s similar to my dance recitals as a kid, or my ultimate frisbee tournaments in college. It’s a world where nothing else exists; a state of pure focus. This feeling was amplified by the night-time guided meditation that Lauren played from her phone as we laid in bed at 10 pm. It’s becoming a tradition for us. We did a meditation session before running the San Francisco Marathon (1st Half) last summer, I loved it then, and I love it now. I highly recommend “Race Day Mantra” for all you other runners out there. If nothing else, it will help you fall asleep.
Race Day!
Pre-dawn gear wrangling. Hi, Doug!
At 4 am, I woke up feeling great, like I actually got enough sleep (what?). We had plenty of time to foam roll and eat breakfast. All were in good spirits, and no one was annoyed by my early-morning chatter, which seems to come with my being something of a morning person, and also being around friends. Thanks for tolerating me, guys :)
North to south, through beautiful Pacific Northwest island terrain.
A note on the race logistics this year: Normally the Whidbey Half Marathon is a loop, but this year it was a point-to-point race. That meant that we had to drive from our Airbnb, which was near the start line, thirty minutes south, to the finish line. Then we had to park, catch a shuttle thirty minutes back to the start line, making sure we would have enough time to do all of the pre-race stuff like go to the bathroom and check our gear. We didn’t have time to pick up our bibs at the expo the night before, so we had to do that at the start line, too, and I was nervous this would be a hassle and take a lot of time.
Thankfully, there was no line and we had all our gear in a couple of minutes (it’s a somewhat small race). After that, we had an hour to kill, so we stood by heat lamps and did some warm-up jogs along the water.
Heat lamps — so hot right now.
As I said earlier, the weather was *perfect* — cool temperature, low humidity, and the sun had just come up. After the start gun, we were off, and the first half mile was actually uphill. It was peaceful and relaxing, and I chose not to put my headphones in to enjoy the atmosphere. Lauren and I were in the first wave, near the back; Doug and Maria were behind the ropes in wave 2.
Peaceful and perfect. The kind of morning where, even if you weren’t running a race, you’d still want to get up early and stretch your legs.
Lauren and I have run together before, but we don’t live in the same city, so we can’t actually train together. We had talked a lot about our mutual training for this race, and I knew she had a lot of speed workouts under her belt. I was sure she’d leave me in the dust, given that my last 12 mile run had an average pace of, like, 10:29 or something. However, the scenery, the excitement, plus the distraction of having someone to talk to made the initial 9:00-ish pace feel right. And, no music — maybe this is better for me? Maybe music slows me down? “The pace feels so good,” I started to think, “Maybe I’ll have to experiment with this no-music thing in regular runs.”
The first couple of miles were rolling hills, and as the sun came up, it warmed our fingers. Around mile 4 the 2:00 pace group caught up with us, which seemed too fast for them — we were certainly running faster than that at the time. They ran with us for a bit, but we let them go on to avoid some of the noise and chatter. Doug and Maria, who had started in the wave after us, caught us during the fourth mile with a, “Wow, was that mile 20 already? I feel great!” shout from behind. Oh, Doug. Running along, we passed an elephant statue, and I let loose on a few downhills, still feeling wonderful. Lauren’s watch said we were still running just a bit under 9:20s, which meant we were on track (according to runningforfitness.org’s pace calculator) to maybe beat my current PR of 2:02:53, and *maybe* even break two hours. I tried not to think about it, and just enjoy myself.
After mile marker 6, we hit the big hill — the one that my shuttle buddy had told me about, and the one that looked the scariest on the race elevation profile I had studied the week before.
Damn that hill.
Lauren and I had talked about this before, and we knew we would push each other to be strong. No need to talk, we agreed. Just make it up the hill. Slow and steady. A mile and a half of straight climbing. You run to it, and then you’re in it.
The first part of the hill went well, with our feet keeping a steady rhythm to which I found myself zoning out. There was a woman behind us had loud music which took me out of my focus. She was playing “This is my fight song,” and I thought her headphones were just super loud. Later, I learned that it was just a speaker on her arm. PSA: This is Not Cool. Don’t do that in a race, please.
After the initial big climb, we turned a corner, and saw … the rest of the hill. Which included a false peak about half a mile later. Woo. It was killing our pace, but we had to keep going. The last bit, the steepest bit, was the hardest — the difference in speed between walking and jogging was basically nothing. We made it to the top, and our average pace was something like 10:30 for that mile.
It’s totally negative splits if you squint a bit.
We were still on track for a PR for me, though, which was surprising, given my training. We made a plan for the rest of the race: stay around a 9:00 pace, and then at mile 10, start accelerating. Lauren is great at negative splits, and she told me this metaphor about picturing the end of your race as a tube of toothpaste, and you try to squeeze out all of your energy without using it up too fast or having too much left in the tube at the end. I thought of this as we trotted on, past the cheering spectators and egg farms and prancing island horses.
Then, around 11.5 miles, my knees started to hurt. Both of them. In the joints, not the muscles, which sucked, because I’m good at mentally pushing through muscle fatigue or mental fatigue or hard breathing, but not joints. Joints get me. After a half mile, I decided to take my patellar band off, and it felt a little better. Then I remembered something I heard once about marathon runners, long before I started running: how their legs would just go numb and that’s how they finished without getting tired. This resonated with me. “My legs are just numb,” I thought. “That’s what’s happening. I’m not tired, and I’m breathing easy, so I’ll just keep moving my legs and not think about them.”
This worked! There was a hill in the 12th mile, and I found myself pulling away from Lauren, and then passing other runners and walkers on the incline. My dad is an intense Nordic skier, and he taught my sister and I to sprint the uphills on our skis. Passing people on hills feels right. I like it, and it mentally invigorated me; I momentarily forgot about my knee pain. I even started singing, “This is my fight song,” to myself, in my head. I made it to the top of that last hill feeling stronger than ever.
But, I felt bad about leaving Lauren. We had both told each other that it was totally okay to go ahead if we needed, and I was excited about the prospect of PRing, or breaking two hours. But still. It was kind of a jerk move to leave her on a hill. I made a deal with myself that if I turned around and I could see that she was close, I would wait for her. I was worried that it might ruin my pace and cause me to not get a cool time, but it felt like the right thing to do.
In the end, it’s so lucky that I did — maybe I subconsciously knew that I would need her for the last mile. I turned around and she was barely seconds behind me.
And then, at at the mile 13 marker, it all started going to hell.
We were accelerating. Mile 13 started for us at 1:52 (Lauren’s PR), and all of a sudden, my left leg was dead. I couldn’t feel the muscles — like, really couldn’t feel them — and my joints, from hip to knee to ankle, were in pain. It was like when you sleep on your arm and wake up in the middle of the night before the pins and needles start, so you have to just swing it around to give it space. I had to swing my left leg forward on every step just to keep moving. I was relying completely on my right leg’s muscles to keep me moving.
I tried to stop and shake the muscles, stretch it out, but nothing was helping. I cried out in frustration. I was so close, and I had no idea what was wrong with me, what was going on. I was worried I would have to limp across the finish line. The thing that actually kept me going was my buddy. Lauren was there, pulling me forward with her voice.
“Come on. Let’s go. We’re so close, you can do it. Every step gets you closer. Come on.”
I stopped several more times. I screamed in anger, and in pain. I had a mild panic attack when I thought about tripping or limping or having something really bad be wrong with my leg, and that caused me to start wheezing in a way that felt like asthma (I don’t have asthma). I was so freaking frustrated. What was going on? The fucking last mile. The downhill mile. We should have been cruising, but my body was failing me.
“Come on, Alex, come on! Keep going! We’re almost there, look, that’s mile 26, only 0.2 miles left. Look, you can see the finish line, you’re almost there! You’re going to do it! You could walk now and still PR! You’re so close, you’ve got this!”
And though I was screaming and groaning out loud, inside I was thinking, “oh my god, Lauren, thank you.” I gasped, and I pushed and swung my leg around, and then we crossed the finish line, together.
That last fucking mile.
We hugged. I started crying. Then I started wheezing again, so I made myself exhale to calm down, successfully fending off a panic attack. Doug and Maria were there and someone put a medal around my neck and I wasn’t tired but I was so, so, done. It was the hardest experience I’ve ever had in a race.
I went to the medical tent and drank some electrolytes and they massaged my IT band and put me in some ice and compression and the rest of the day the limp slowly got better. “I’m taking some time off after this,” I decided, and the rest of the weekend passed in a lovely haze of beaches and sunsets and beer and bird songs on the porch.
Olympics in the distance, islands all around.
I am so, so grateful to everyone who got me through this race. Angela for her training and support, my San Francisco running buddies (keep pusheen on!), Doug and Maria for being so game and willing to join us, and especially Lauren, for literally saving me when I needed it the most.
more?!
This was my first race report ever, which makes it the last first for Whidbey. I’ve always enjoyed reading other’s reports, and if you’re looking for more cool runners to read, here are some recommendations:
Interviewer: You’ve got this rage within you. Where does it come from?
Charlize Theron: Uh…surprise. Women have that. I’m not the only one. (x)
I kept thinking about what I wanted to add to this post, about women and rage, and how rarely women are allowed to be both angry and powerful on screen.
This is one of those shots that goes by in a split second, like almost every shot in Mad Max: Fury Road, but I had to pause here to screen cap and gasp. Because…her fucking face, man. Her face is amazing. It kind of reminds me of the sandstorm, actually. It’s terrifying and awe-inspiring, and also darkly beautiful in its own way.
This is Furiosa aiming a head shot at Joe from behind Angharad’s pregnant-body human shield. This is the first time in years she’s come face to face with Joe and hasn’t had to hide how she feels about him. And she is ready to KILL that motherfucker.
This is seven thousand days’ worth of concentrated rage.
I think this is one of the shots where you can see most clearly that, whatever we might interpret about the balance of Furiosa’s motivations, Charlize Theron was playing this as a story about vengeance. She’s said so quite explicitly in interviews:
“This idea that she’s kind of saving these women just didn’t feel as interesting to me as…they belong to a man who hurt her incredibly, and she’s just had enough. And she’s just gonna take these women with her. And she’s gonna take what matters to him the most. She’s gonna take the most valuable thing away from him, because he took the most valuable thing away from her. So it’s…it really is the ultimate story of revenge.” (x)
She’s not saving them–she’s stealing them. And she would have been content just to steal what’s most valuable to Joe, but this is an action movie, so of course he chases after her and forces a confrontation, to the point where we know she will have to kill him for this to be over.
Why do I think this is this important?
Women don’t get to express rage on film a lot, but if there’s one form of socially acceptable female rage, it’s motherly, protective rage. “Mama lioness defending her cubs”–that’s something we have a pre-packaged understanding of.
And what I love about Furiosa’s rage is that it is not that–or, it’s not only that. She protects plenty of people over the course of the movie. She throws her body over Cheedo when the Bullet Farmer’s gunfire reaches them. She saves Max about fifty times in the final fight alone. You can see the terror on her face when Toast gets grabbed out of the Rig. She is protective of the people she cares about, or comes to care about.
But the root of her rage is what happened to her.
Her anger is about her own oppression. It is presented as entirely justified and valid, and she is allowed to fully feel it, express it, and act on it on screen, up to and including a moment of violent catharsis.
And her anger is powerful. By the time Furiosa climbs out of the War Rig and onto Joe’s car, she is running on fumes of 100% nitro-boosted rage, and it’s powerful enough to keep her going when she’s in pain, bleeding, struggling to breathe.
“Sooner or later, somebody pushes back,” Miss Giddy says to Joe. His downfall is the downfall of tyrants everywhere–eventually, someone snaps and fights back, even if the risks are great and the chance of success is small.
We know that in real life, there are many situations in which violence is not a useful or desirable response to a problem. But movies are fantasy spaces. They are there for us to emotionally play with things we wouldn’t ever do or want to experience in real life, including fantasies of violent revenge in response to oppression.
But that’s not the only thing that’s going on here. One of the many brilliant things about Fury Road is the way it welds the characters’ individual emotional needs to the greater mission. While it would probably be satisfying watching Furiosa rip Joe’s face off in any context, she ends up doing it in a context that advances the plot. Joe is an obstacle they need to get out of the way before they reach the pass, so they can execute their plan of trapping the rest of his army on the other side and ensure the safety of the group as a whole. (Furiosa says, “I’ll get him out of our way,” but it’s the third act so we know this can only mean killing him.)
So Furiosa’s individual need for violent catharsis gets subsumed by, and fulfilled through, the mission of the group–in the same way that Nux’s need to break with the ideology of the Citadel gets fulfilled when he flips the Rig to protect the group, and Max’s need to connect to another human being gets fulfilled through saving Furiosa’s life. These are all functional plot/action beats, but they are also the culminations of each character’s story arc. (And they happen one right after the other, boom boom boom, like fucking clockwork.)
It’s individual emotional needs that drive the characters–but it’s collective struggle, camaraderie and resistance that fulfill them.
I put forth that women probably have MORE rage than men, because men are allowed to express it more in ways that are considered socially acceptable. Women aren’t SUPPOSED TO be angry.
“Good instinct’s worth a hundred men in the field.” And so is @nicolasbruno. Photographer, archer, craftsman. Nick’s innovation and steadfastness help the #FellCompany accomplish what it sets out to do. (at Wilderland)
I want an inverse spy flick. The spy is a woman. Her whole team is made up of diverse women. All the villains are women. There is only one man in the entire movie and he is a Strong Male Character who is like 25 and decently ripped and has a scene where he slowly steps out of a pool wearing speedos because he is Confident and In Control of His Sexuality. We see his ass when he has to tug down his pants to get at the knife strapped to his thigh. His nipples are always erect for no fucking reason.
They are undercover in a nightclub. In order to keep their cover from being blown, he has to kiss another man.
He knits to relieve stress and to keep his mind sharp. It is never discussed by any of the characters.
Someone asks him how he knows how to do Traditionally Feminine Thing. “I have four sisters,” he answers.
This is also how he knows how to fight while armed with nothing but a purse, a high heel shoe, and a can of hair spray. During this fight, he is, for no apparent reason, shirtless.
The lead spy is Helen Mirren. She nails the Action Boy in the shower. There’s a lot of lingering closeups on the way the shower spray runs across his breathlessly ecstatic face. We also hear every breathless whimper of his climax, while out in the hallway Lucy Liu is smoking impatiently, a duffel bag full of rocket launchers slung over her shoulder. The President isn’t going to kidnap herself, here, christ.
Action Boy emerges in a small towel, sheepish yet radiant. Helen Mirren emerges in a tuxedo, also smoking, also with a duffel bag of rocket launchers.
In one scene, the lead villain captures the Strong Male Character. He is, once more, inexplicably shirtless as she ties him to the chair. He makes some quips about his sexual independence before he is rescued by a sweat-drenched Helen Mirren, who kicks down the door and nukes everyone in the room. Strong Male Character’s hair remains perfect throughout the ordeal.
Strong Male Character is heartlessly slain in front of Helen Mirren’s eyes despite all of his skills and combat prowess. His body slumps to the ground, lifeless but supple. Helen Mirren makes a witty quip at Strong Male Character’s killers before quickly and dramatically slaying them all.
She steals one last glance at Strong Male Character. His beautiful eyes stare back from a handsome face with perfectly tussled hair, lips positioned a if in a gentle sigh. There’s no bringing him back now. Helen Mirren walks away, stronger than before. Strong Male Character’s death has hardened her, but given her the strength and resolve to complete her task.
LARPing means so much to me. It may seem geeky or lame or have a nerdy rep, but let me tell you, since beginning this crazy hobby? sport? cult? I have become fitter, stronger, and more outgoing. I’ve made countless friends, furthered my skills (like sewing, woodwork etc), and it’s given me a reason to get excited about something every week. It allows me to get away from the stresses and pressures of real life, which is a rare kind of blessing and I’m happy with the person I’ve grown to become. I’ve finally found ‘my thing’ and I’m never gonna give that up.
(4/6) “My last tour was in Afghanistan. That was the bad one. One day we were on a foot patrol, and we were using a metal detector to sweep the road for IEDs. I was a staff sergeant but I’d temporarily taken over as platoon sergeant, so this was really the first time I’d been in a position of leadership. We came across a copper wire stretched over the road and traced it back to some explosives. While we waited for the disposal team, we came under fire. It was an ambush. I thought I’d remember my training but instead I just froze. I messed it up. I was supposed to return fire, flank, and keep good radio communication. But all I felt was horror and I froze. I just got pinned down and bullets were kicking up dust around me and I was just waiting to take one in the head and die. All that training and drilling meant nothing. One of my soldiers got hit by an RPG and was severely injured. I was supposed to be the one in charge, but I froze and did nothing. When the firing subsided, we grabbed our injured man and started driving back down the road. I’ll never forget seeing the villagers laughing at us while we drove away.”
A striking story. I feel for him and imagine that I would react similarly in such a situation….
Boston Dynamics, creator of the Big Dog prancing robot, has upgraded their Atlas robot, which can walk on two legs, open doors, stack boxes, walk on slippery terrain, recover from being shoved, etc. And everyone's all HA HA HA TERMINATOR but soon enough the HA HAs will become less hearty and more nervous. It took human ancestors hundreds of thousands of years to evolve from quadrupeds to bipeds and Boston Dynamics has done the same in just a few years.
Mark my words: no good will come of playing box keep-away with robots and treating them like, well, machines. It's already started...did you notice Atlas didn't even look behind itself to see if it needed to hold the door for anyone? And you think manspreading on the subway is a problem...wait until we have to deal with robotspreading by robots whose ancestors we shoved with hockey sticks.
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