#Comics Nile is a tired millenial and an ENTIRE MOOD

[lady-writes]

So I was reading fic, as one does, when I had a characterization idea, as one does, that dropped me into a wiki hole, naturally. So now I have meta, tentatively titled:

Or How to fuck up a team

Bear with me here, Everything that happens in The Old Guard can be blamed on the Church of England and a critical lack of Respecting Women Juice.

I would “In this essay, I will,” But that would be an insult to essays. What follows is a ADHD ramble that keeps pinballing into even higher scoring holes in my head. I apologize.

Looking at most teams in media you have tropes and those tropes kinda make up the way we read characters. This isn't a bad thing, I’m not saying anything new here; much like DND alignments tropes kinda help you build characters, and figure out paths that they should take. 

So The Old Guard, I fucking love this movie, the comics are an imperfect delight, All of it is living rent free in my head for the foreseeable future. Love is stored in The found Family Trope! I’m writing fanfiction for the first time in a fucking Decade and I Hate It! Which is fitting because its Book of Nile and that’s in the Manifesto!!! I’ve been ruminating on why Not Enough People Love Nile Freeman apart from the obvious (misogynoir) and myself struggling with my my brain cant get over the sad french rat man WHen! NILE! IS! RIGHT! THERE! I will come back to this point.~

SO Tropes, for groups tropes exist two, dynamic duos, golden trios, etc. And the Old Guard was fucking with me because the tropes kept falling like one or two hairs off. For the purposes of this I am ignoring Lykon***, because I need to sleep at some point tonight and I cant characterize him the best based on 15 seconds of screentime. 

The big group tropes that suit the canon here are: The Five Man Band, The Command Crew, Damage-Healer-Tank and its variants, The Four Temperament and the Four Philosophy Ensembles. They’re all linked and none of them are perfect but together they do the damn job.

(sweet jesus im making graphics quarantine is a bitch i need my fuckin job back)

The Guard at its Largest and Earliest is a quartet. Andromache, Quynh, Joe, Nicolo. They Work: a head, a heart, and two arms, which is more or less my conception of the Guard. The problem comes when the Church of mother fucking England comes along and tells a bunch a folks that the weird lady on the edge of town isn't touched in the head nah she's a whole ass witch, we’re gonna kill her. That's Just Not On, enter our dudes. 

The other point about the guard here is that when split they form pretty solid and clean head and heart couples, which wouldn’t you know the mix-match of those seem quite well liked by the fandom at large. Anyways CoE is shitty and removes Quynh from our team and this is where everything goes to fuck.

Basically, as soon as Andy loses her second/emotional support everything falls out of alignment and the team isn't self sustaining anymore so to speak

The team loses its proverbial heart yes, but that shouldn't be insurmountable, in all of the various group trope set ups heart (The Chick, The Medic, The Optimist, Choleric, center column for RPG) is never really the top of the list, usually second some times further down. The key is that everyone of these has something/someone at the center, a fulcrum or balance. That should be Andromache, the oldest, most objective and experienced  etc etc. But unlike less human hero’s Andromache kinda goes to shit, which is what makes her a fun character to watch, she's struggling that’s relatable, we all know how it works.

But She falls out of the leader position in all the emotional ways, from what we see, and in just about all configurations, she falls into the least stable trope. The only one where she doesn’t is The Command Crew, which of course that grouping is all about Function and obviously Andromache the Scythian has all her function based cylinders firing. Possibly too much even, at the start of the film the team is regrouping after a break, they needed R&R, the work was getting to heavy. And we see Andy’s fatigue repeatedly in the film but she’s the Captain, She Goes First. Injury and exhaustion don’t matter, because she has to function and there’s no one in the second position to take that burden off of her.

By my estimation the Guard is working in this sorta configs for the majority of the movie

(im on a roll and I’ve accepted my fate)

Where I doubled thing up the “natural position” is first and the Post Quynh position follows

So now things are outta whack and Booker comes along. Now pls understand the this is Not Making excuses for, or Woobifying. Booker failed to communicate and chose to treat his team/family as collateral.* This entire motherfucking thesis essay came about as me trying to figure out why Booker fits into the team so awkwardly and Lo! So anywhere from 150-60 years after Quynh is sunk, The team dreams of a new dude. The fandom has made a lot of the fact that Booker was a conscript not a fighter of his own will. And depending on Quynh’s origns he may be alone in that. So a dude who was stuck in a war he didnt choose finds out hes immortal while hanging from a noose in the ass end of Russia. Not a good day. 

We know when the team finds him he insists on going back to his family, beyond all counseling then within 50 years give or take he’s back and he’s the New Guy, The New guy is always gonna be 2 things, full of shiny new skills and with not a clue how things work . That character become a bit of dead weight that needs carrying but also a resource in all the places they have new information. And here’s the second really unfortunate thing. Altogether TOG fandom knows 3 overarching things about Booker: He loved his family to the point of despair; he’s cares about his family’s opinions, wellbeing, and happiness; he’s lonely alcoholic, and depressed as fuck. As torn up as he stays about his family (nearly crying in a cave talking to Nile more than a century later!) its a fair assumption that he would throw him self into the team when he returned. 

I am not going to assume from the outset that the dude who sat at his son’s bedside and tried to be a good Father after he literally died, jumped headfirst into the bottle at the first chance (also the makeup doesn’t support it and the makeup dept. did a fair amount of the work of making booker look like an alcoholic) My guess is his first move after grieving was the distract himself with the team, learning and teaching in kind. They don’t have the relationship that Joe Nicky and Andy are so upset about him destroying outta know where. Booker probably wanted to make himself as useful as possible and knowing about Quynh he knew that his presence was the thing that made them a foursome again.

In short, Booker picked up every single fucking role he saw empty and tried to fill it because it would distract him from his pain (it didn’t that’s what talking/therapy is for but oops 1812) and because it made him needed and useful again. The guy’s quintessential character trait is grieving Father. He was determined to provide for his first family, which is how he ended up in the army anyways and it stands to reason that he would do the same for the Guard. It’s no mistake that the thing that hooks him on his suicide attempt is the idea of saving other people from pain/grief.

So this guy is putting all his familial angst on the team (silently) and picking up what’s needed, Like finding jobs, a task that probably used to be Joe’s, staying up on current tech, forging, fighting. And eventually drinking when its not enough to deal. So the teams proverbial squishy wizard (the only who had no formal fight training before he died) is pulling double duty, which isn’t a problem unto itself. 

But he becomes Andy’s Partner. Joe and Nicky are a pair she clearly doesn’t begrudge them that. She and Book are the spares, on and off the job. I’m sure the idea of a 70 year old immortal trying to comfort a 6000 year old immortal on losing her  wife sounded ridiculous to him too, so he empathize and followed her lead(new kid) And Andy, fairly given both loss and the relative span of time for her, Is still out of alignment, She’s not necessarily acting as a leader, though I’m sure by this point Booker clearly regarded her as one. But instead of moving past the tragedies of his mortal life Booker is still living with that grief (it was all the two of them had as he said)

This is not a good look. Andy lacks emotional support and the team props her up where they can but none of them have anything close to the literal scale of experience she’s working with. Yusuf and Nicolo pick up slack in certain places, but have each other to retreat into and importantly an Idea of the Before times. They know exactly which niches to fill or leave empty. Booker lacks emotional support (his fault), is floundering at how to deal with/fit into the team (everyone’s fault) and most likely trying to overcompensate for feeling out of place by doing As Much As He Can (not a bug but a feature)

ENTER NILE FREEMAN: THE PERSON WHO MADE IT ALL MAKE SENSE

(YA’LL THOUGHT I WAS DONE????)

Bookers exile is reflected here and the Grey roles in Niles chart  represent the places where his absence affects her entry to the team

As soon as I came back to Nile It made sense, Bookers ungodly block of meta and analysis of how this sad white boy got broke is a direct result of the moment I realized how much Emotional Labor and Weight just got dropped on Nile’s sweet 26 year old shoulders. Because the facts are:

Andy is just now in the year of No Lords 2020 pulling her head out of the 500 year funk that she and then she and Booker wallowed in. For 500 years the team functioned around her warped heart. For me this is not a Fault of Andy, its quite squarely on the Goddamned Shitshow of the Medieval Church of England.

Because to be quite frank, a 6700 year old woman is allowed 500 years to mourn her 2500 year old relationship. Looking at those numbers Andy was doing fine on the getting over it front.

Nile and Booker’s fuck up (and arguably her mortality) woke Andy up to herself again, but had that not happened; Nile’s first century would have been unbearable, The New Kid in a team where now Everyone is emotionally traumatized, you’re picking up the slack of the Heavy they just had to exile.**  Hopefully bringing in Copely removes Navigator from her row, but instead of that she gets the honor of Andy proverbially passing her the torch. 

The Movie makes it clear as do the Comics that Nile is going to be Andy’s Second if not eventually her replacement. Not as a replacement for Quynh though, Nile doesn’t have the temperament for that. Which means that Nile ends up in a different awkward position to Bookers. The hero in training, who doesn’t have a “sidekick” to balance the load with. To be fair Andy was a lone hero for 3000 years, but that was a very VERY different world. Andy literally could not know 1/4 of the scope of the problems that Nile will “inherit.” The scope of the current world would have been like looking out the other side of a black hole to that Andromache

And Nile is no less compassionate than Booker, pragmatism would have said to leave the person, who 1) shot your boss 2)abandoned your team 3) wants to die 4) asked you to leave him there. So that is the terrible horrible no good very bad predicament that Nile Freeman undeservedly finds her self in that leads to having to use her own body to turn Dudley Dursley into a pancake.

~ This is where the point about why the Frenchman when Nile is right there pops back up. The coda puts a close on Nile’s Story to an extent. One way or another Nile in the next 6 months to a year in universe is going to have some amount of the excess weight taken off of her. Quynh’s reappearance in any function makes that inevitable even if it comes from Andy’s Death, because if Andy Dies the table is wiped clean and rearranges itself especially I would imagine if that death comes before Nile even turn 50.

Nile has baggage, Nile has a carry-on and a pair of checked bags and she’s checking in for a first class delta flight. Armed with her headphones of emotional awareness and well being she gonna get through the turbulence of her first lifetime almost certainly

Andromache is promised much of the same. Especially in a world where she and Quynh are afforded the grace of getting to fight and sit and talk and find absolution and resolution for the Literal Worst We’re On A Break/It’s Long Distance of all time.

Yusuf and Nicolo will get over this shit together and fuck off into the sunset, as has been written many mmmmany times.

Booker on the other hand is taking off from Kitty Hawk, in a Wright Brothers replica with 2 moving trucks worth of luggage. He is a flaming human disaster heading for the water. And people fucking love looking at Crash wreckage and flames.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In a just and perfect world with out the Church of England these fuckers would be a Well Oiled Machine though, like FUUUUUCK

(ONE LAST TIIIIME)

There are some question marks as to where people will fall in a post crisis setting, I’m taking the most optimistic view myself.

Ultimately Booker, should be the universal heart of the team, they just need to let him be Q/Ops because THATS A VALID TEAM POSITION TOO. And then he’s always perfectly positioned to be Nile’s emotional support person as well.

TL: DR 

- Give Nile a Fighter Jet instead of the Axe**** 

- Booker’s grief counselor says house husband would be the best occupation for him, 

- Andy needs Therapy more than Booker but Maybe some day he’ll be equipped to give it, 

- Quyhn should be allowed to ritually destroy the Church of England and drown the Pope because they nearly destroyed her family

Fin.

*In a perfect world based on this meta, Booker would have called everything out and spilled his guts after the Sudan shitshow pushed Andy to call it Quits or most Certainly after dreaming of Nile, but alas, The Plot! 

**Potentially I like to think Nile has the good sense and emotional literacy to say when its to much for her unlike certain french folk

*** Lykon I’m sorry. Your Smile is Radiant and you are clearly Heart/Smart Guy/Sanguine/Optimistic/Tank. YOU SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN TO BE A BOISTEROUS BRUISER. You deserve better and someday perhaps I will write an epic about how this never happened if you had been around

**** I fully accept the headcanon from the glorious ionsquare fic that Nile inherits and wears into battle Bookers Napoleonic sabre. But let my good bitch fly some planes and spaceships too. Its the millennial dream

[lady-writes]

#While he's healing she going to be hurting #and probably doing a little falling apart #What if we kissed on the banks or the thames and the emotional catharsis was reciprocal #what if nile isnt just the love booker learns he deserves #but booker is the support that nile learns she needs #black women are so used to holding other people up that its fucking hard to remember #that we need holding up too! #AND SHES A BIG SISTER/OLDEST DAUGHTER #TO A MOTHER THAT LOST HER HUSBAND #AND A FUCKING MARINE SWEET CHRIST

#Nile is strong indubitably #but shes also used to NEEDING TO BE strong #AND 100 YEARS IS A LONG AS TIME TO BE STRONG #TO NOT BE A SOURCE OF WORRY #TO HELP OTHER PEOPLE #TO KEEP THE PAIN MANAGABLE #Comics Nile is a tired millenial and an ENTIRE MOOD #Movie Nile is too im sure and she staring down the barrel of eternity #WWNFD?

After 100 years...

I ve seen a lot of takes esp. in certain lovely corners of the fandom (Book of Nile, whoop!) about Bookers inevitable return and how much better he is/ will be but it just occurred to me that there’s a darker/angstier flip side to that.

Regardless of your Quyhn/Andy and Andy/immortality headcanons…

 Its 100 years for Nile too.

A century of potential rising/ falling global fascim and racial tension

A century of definite rising oceans and global climate change

A century of ever more rapidly evolving technology and the way that humanity always creates while thinking of the best in people but ends up utilizing in the worst ways 

A century of watching what ever happens to racial tensions in the US, still her home, after all this is still a natural lifetime to her, healing notwithstanding

100 years of loss, because at the end of this even if Andromache regains her healing, every friend and family member Nile had before age 26 will almost certainly be dead, (Copley perfectly poised to be her last link to normal mortality within the guard and a surrogate parent(BTW WHERES THAT FIC) too)

100 years of being the odd woman out, because if Andromache regains her healing, the one Single Person between two Couples OR  even more poignantly the one single person between an  a couple and unfathomably old woman mourning her love.

In that Century how much sadder might she become, how jaded? I know we all love to think of Nile as our unflappable, Peak Well This Might As Well Happen Millennial, but we are also a ridiculously disenchanted and depressed generation. Reddit Nihilism is in our blood just as much as Vine/TikTok Absurdism. No amount of therapy will keep 100 years of God only knows what the Future willl dish out from dulling a persons shine.

“She was going to let you off with an apology“

chuckle “She’ll Learn.”

At the Start of the 22nd Century How Much More Is Nile Going to Be Like The Booker That She Walked Away From on the Banks of The Thames?

(And yes. I’m sure that the team will make and active effort to *Do Better For Nile Than They Did For Booker,* but again I can’t help but liken it to parenting in a way, and we all know that regardless of your families best intentions they usually fuck you up one way or another. The Guard I’m sure didn’t mean to let Book get so depressed that he was willing to sell them out for a chance at death. They were all surprised/dismayed to realize, right? Things slip through the cracks/ They’re still mostly only human/ They fuck you up, your Mom and Dad) 

Imagine Booker returning and seeing the/a Ghost of himself, 100 or 200 years ago, behind Nile’s eyes…