For the give me a character meme: The Bullet Farmer
Oh man, this is going to be really difficult. I haven’t spent extensive time thinking about The Bullet Farmer or The People Eater except to figure out how they may work as metaphors for our current troubles here. So, I’m just gonna kind of swing this as I go and give gut responses.
How I feel about this character: Gross gross but also fascinating in his not adhering strictly to The Cult of Immortan Joe. Not only does he diminish the severity of the situation that was going on as beautifully articulated here and in doing so also demonstrate how honestly uninterested he was in Joe’s fanatasm about his ‘property’ (room here to interpret him as queer and in love with Joe and acting out and out of jealousy tho I don’t think that I personally hold this view but can see it), but he’s also excited at the prospect of torture and death. He makes me think of a whiny, self indulgent teenager who only gets his way out of his sheer willingness to be cruel and also having the right ‘connections.’ But yeah, I definitely find it interesting how he seems to get away with not strictly following as Joe would likely desire, taking off on his own without any real word from Joe about it and also ‘probing’ for the War Rig at the very literal threat of harming Joe’s ““property.”” And the tantrum he throws after he’s injured after firing into the distance, pretty much demanding retaliation, just… what privileged little shit!
All the people I ship romantically with this character: I don’t actually. I can see the Joe/Bullet Farmer ship, and I’m not against it, but I’m also not a huge fan of it. I’m really only somewhat comfortable seeing People Eater as queer after the last several movies using queercoding to signify villains. Not a call out post, just my personal feelings. I also kind of see him as one of those dudes that’s fucked up his sexuality so much that he’s not turned on or recieving sexual gratification unless someone’s in pain around him, most likely inflicted by him.
My non-romantic OTP for this character: I can’t decide if I like the idea of him and Joe being great friends and that being why he can get away with acting the way he does, or if I like the idea of Joe having seen some value in him, placed him in a place of power, and then realized how fucked up and dangerous/chaotic he was and kind of just let’s him do what he want unless he really needs to rein him in. Buut, the second one doesn’t quite fit with an Imperator trying to talk him down, soo, I’ll just go with BFarmer/Joe then. lol My unpopular opinion about this character: Ummm… I don’t follow him enough really to know what would be unpopular. Something in above? Perhaps not shipping him with Joe or seeing him as queer. I feel like the later at least seems common? Something about him not really caring about reproduction. Obviously I have my own head canon for that thought. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sorry, I wish I had better answers for these ones.
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: So, the first couple times I watched this, I didn’t quite make out what BF said to Joe in the bog during the Angharad in the Gigahorse, so I actually thought he was saying that he wasn’t interested in being there for Angharad’s torture, not ‘called to’ a different torture. His comment about bullets for Furiosa made me think that he just wanted to get this all over with. Kind of, put a bullet in her head and be done with it. So I was actually given the impression he had NO interest in torture. And I thought that was really cool. I was super interested in a villain who was just trying to manage his own estates and be selfish and what not but not actually interested in active acts of evil. Side by side with Joe and People Eater (who later takes extreme pleasure in running over someone), it seemed like a nice contrast. So, a part of me still really wishes that this was the case and that it should have gone down like that. To me, it would have opened him up as a character in a way, but whatevs. I now have all sorts of different head canons about him, so I guess it worked out anyway.
Another thing though: totally wish he hadn’t lost his eyes. I have a really, really strong squick toward eye gore, and I had a very violent reaction to that image. I always close my eyes at that part but it often still sneaks up on me. There are a fair number of screen cuts around it. Also, the gifsets. Randomly running into this on my dash… :-S I mean, I deal. I’ve gotten a Little jaded to That image in particular, but it still gets me from time to time.
Thanks for the ask!!
