#and I used Joe and Nicky as motivation for him to watch

[astrabear]

A coworker watched The Old Guard on my recommendation and he really liked it and I am being so normal about it. I am not interrogating him about his favorite parts or infodumping or squeeing or anything. Absolutely killing it with my impression of a sane human being who cares about this movie a reasonable amount.

It's awful. I hate it.

[ludiharambasha]

I started watching Black Sails, which distracted me from my You rewatch and reread, but when I have time to finish all that I'll post a more detailed analysis of a theme and a motif in You that I would have to analyze and connect with the whole story more carefully.

For now, I find the way Caroline Kepnes realizes the motif of Joe as a reader incredibly interesting. Joe is a bookseller, and he is obviously well-read, but if you look at how he analyses the works he references in the show (I can't speak for the works referenced in the books because I did not read a lot of them), and Joe... blatantly misreads them (Don Quijote, Frankenstein and Crime and Punishment are the offenders in the show that I can remember off the top of my head; and all of these references nod to something in the story that parallels Joe and his state- but I'll write more on that when I assemble the references, read those I haven't and when I reread the books and rewatch the show). More importantly, there is a scene in the first book in which Beck sleeps with him in the cage. And Joe, as if he did not cage and torture the woman, truly believes that Beck slept with him then because she truly wanted to and not to do her best to make an escape. He obviously misreads her intentions. This is not the only instance he does this, and not the only character who does this to Beck-Benji, Peach and Dr. Nicky all project onto Beck, project how hey interpret her behavior towards them onto her (and all these characters are merely there to aid Joe's theme, as they only reflect bits and pieces of his own views on Beck- Benji tells Joe that Beck is a golddigging whore as a reflection of Joe's doubts in Beck; Peach behaves in almost the exact same way as Joe and tries to manipulate Beck into loving her and being with her and even says at a certain point that she just "uses people"; Dr Nicky is just someone who sees Beck as temptation, a succubus, and says in the book that she is "sex ifself", a position Joe obvioulsy takes as she is magnetic to him to such a degree) and they are there to highlight the fact that Joe, whether in the specific part of the book he sees her as this Madonna paragon of goodness or as a whore desperate for attention, consistently misreads Beck's intentions. He constantly attaches meaning to her actions and her character that they don't have, or he fails to see her as a complex being with both faults and virtues. And he is not the only one, other characters I mentioned do this as well, people either misunderstand her actions and brush them off superficially (Benji) or project their sexual desires onto her (how Sasuke is treated in the narrative is kind of similar to this, that people around him are crazy about him and constantly project their ideas of what he should be and what he should do to please them, although You takes it in a sexual direction that Naruto doesn't go into) - Beck is magical and deeply alluring to those around her (in the book especially; this aspect of her character is not as prominent in the show I'm afraid).

And I interpret this as a commentary on art and readership in general (along with other themes that I discussed a long while ago, and probably will again in the future). Beck is beauty itself, art itself (and not an artist- there are several nods to the fact that she is of mediocre talent in the show and the books- however, I don't think we can say for certain because again, the character in the books and the show that call her mediocre may have an ulterior motive to say so, and we can't exactly evaluate it ourselves), a puzzle people constantly project onto and misread and attach unjustified meaning to, an entity that inspires a deep emotional reaction from those that interact with her, with her codes and maps of meaning to her that are hidden away (the ladle that is constantly being recontextualized, the dead father that isn't dead, etc.). This is why I talked about the motif of Joe being someone who loves books and how it is this motif that is particularly clever and powerful- Joe tries to posit himself as the observer of the world, of art, and he fails at that at the most fundamental level. Joe approaches Beck with an entitlement that he is the one who truly understands her when this couldn't be further from the truth. And we are Joe in a certain aspect- we also engage in these acts of misinterpretation (something that validates my point is how the fans of the show, when it first came out, sided with Joe and labeled Beck as a whore and made misogynistic remarks about her.)

[I realize the irony of it possibly being me that is projecting onto Beck and misreading her and the book- if I see that I missed the mark with this analysis I might delete it]

[nevermindirah]

Things I love about James Tiberius Copley

*Tiberius isn't his canon middle name. Nile calls him that in I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore, where Nile & Copley friendship was the sneak-attack best part of writing that fic. (Background detail I decided just now: Nile used to watch a lot of Star Trek reruns with her grandparents.)

Ok. James Copley. The antagonist with a heart of... actually a significant amount of gold alloyed with the bullshit.

His wife died two years ago and he sounds wrecked describing her late-stage symptoms. He starts with "she couldn't TALK." He cared about what that woman had to say. He quit his high-status high-salary job because of her illness — the movie doesn't specify whether it was to care for her, to spend more time with her, or just because of his grief, but the way Chiwetel portrays him, I think he was part of her care team.

I know a lot of people with professional experience at least somewhat like Copley's and that shit is beyond toxic, interpersonally and structurally. You never know whether someone who's pleasant and engaging like Copley is at that table in Marrakech will turn out to be an unrepentant power-hungry monster who's charming only as far as it'll get them something they want. We've seen plenty of those stories and many of them are interesting but I love that Copley's story isn't that. He has genuinely good intentions: the end of disease. He just doesn't fucking think about the downsides of his chosen strategy.

It completely tracks with my experience of folks who've spent years in "for the greater good" jobs related to the US government that he would do something this terrible, with such obviously predictable negative consequences, having made no contingencies whatsoever to prevent or even limit those obviously predictable negative consequences, while genuinely believing himself to be doing the right thing for the right reasons. Not seeing the trees for the forest thinking is one of the most frustrating and heartbreaking things about my industry, and seeing that play out here in the form of Copley failing to give adequately clear instructions to the kill floor mercenaries and then failing to anticipate Merrick's extremely strong economic motivation to lock away the Guard for a long-ass time, and then seeing fandom explode with very reasonable "wow Copley and Booker are complete idiots" — like, yeah, that's exactly why a lot of government programs don't work anywhere near as well as they should. Can't see the trees for the forest thinking. It's not just white supremacy and capitalism that means we can't have nice things (though that's A LOT of why), it's also that running massively complex projects requires attention to the micro as well as the macro that plenty of smart and ambitious and at-least-somewhat-well-meaning people like James Copley just completely fail at. They believe their own bullshit and believe their golden ambitions will be enough. The text doesn't super encourage this analysis, but it's there, and it's a hell of a thing to be present even under the surface in a summer blockbuster.

Copley's biggest flaw is assuming everyone shares his moral worldview. He seems unperturbed by the presumably local South Sudanese people who are paid to be slaughtered by the Guard in the opening setup, just how the CIA trained him to be callous to "necessary" loss of life. He insists to Andy and then to Nile that immortality is a gift to the world, and it seems it hadn't occurred to him until Nile says so that it wasn't his gift to give. When Andy isn't healing from Booker's gunshot, Copley is immediately concerned for her welfare (ironic as hell considering he arranged these circumstances) and he's disturbed that Merick isn't, despite Copley's own lack of concern for all the dead mercenaries this plan of his has racked up so far. He's shocked and outraged when he finds out Merrick intends to hold the Guard captive indefinitely when it's just the most obvious fucking thing for a CEO to "protect intel" from competitors. Anticipating where other people he's working with might have values and goals other than his own is not a skill Copley has, because it doesn't occur to him that moral perspectives other than his own even exist.

What interesting flaws to give an antagonist turned support character, especially one who could be a secondary protagonist and even a foil to Nile in the sequel.

My favorite moments of this flawed, squishy mortal person so lovingly portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood:

The aforementioned "She couldn't talk, at the end, my wife. She couldn't breathe." Copley SWEETHEART

The way his fascination with Andy and the Guard borders on child-like wonder. He's not childISH in any way of course, what I mean here is that there's a purity in his reverence for what Andy, Joe, Nicky, and Booker have done with their immortality. His worldview sees some people as more worthy than others of making decisions that will affect millions, and that's fucked up, and it's definitely informing how he treats Andy. But still, the sheer awe in his voice when he talks about the impact Andy has had on the world.

The way Copley's all ready to risk his life and throw down to rescue the Guard, but he immediately gives it up when Nile reminds him that of the two of them she's the only one who would make it out alive. For a dude who was in the damn CIA for however long, he sure does take a young woman's expertise at face value, no ego posturing whatsoever, and I LOVE THAT FOR HIM.

The way Copley says "Good luck, Ms. Freeman" gives me fucking chills. The RESPECT in his tone. He clocks about as fast as Andy does that Nile is her successor.

[squtternutboshing]

Random observations from my fourth rewatch of The Old Guard (having only watched it for the first time last month, I haven't loved a movie in this way in forever):

- I've always loved that line near the beginning when Booker is checking into the hotel and says the reason for his visit is his family because awww yeah, sweet found family vibes. This time though, a dual meaning occured to me: This mission from this hotel is Booker kickstarting the whole 'get evidence of immortality for Merrick so then he can study and maybe cure us' thing. He's largely motivated to do this because of his grief, and what's the cause of that grief? His mortal family. So now that line makes me feel a bit sad.

- Hotel reunion scene gets better every time I watch this film but I still can't quite hear what Joe says when Nicky loses the bet because my brain is too busy congratulating itself for being able to translate what Booker is saying

- The mugs they drink out of in the Charlie safehouse are from Ikea. Source: I own these mugs. And now I can't stop thinking about the Guard taking a trip to Ikea. They would, of course, get trapped in the one way system.

- Something about Booker explaining to Andy why he's given up their secret, in the hope of a cure, really made me think he wouldn't have done it if he hadn't believed Andy wanted an end too. I think if it was just him he wouldn't have done it.

- As Andy tears away in the getaway car at the end of the film she seems to forget we drive on the left-hand side of the road in the UK. NBD, they have bigger problems. Also, it's funny to me every time that this central London street only has 2 cars parked on it - the one they need to drive and the one Nile lands on. What a coincidence!

- The '100 year exile' thing feels really writer enforced, like it was Rucka picking out a number that deliberately reminds the viewer what the life spans of these people are (just in case you had forgotten).

Overall, 10/10, still loved it.

[wickedpact]

A ranking of all the TTT stories in order of how much I liked them.

(Oh god this is so long)

1 My Mother's Axe

BABY ANDYYYYYYYYYYYY. Honestly this one had the trifecta of developing a character's motivations, developing a character's backstory, & developing their personality. The story starting out with Andy teaching Nile to use the axe was so charming and fun, and you could feel that chemistry they had in Opening Fire, the way they teased and bickered with each other so naturally. I loved the wedge between them on the subject of the axe, how Nile was perhaps a little too young to understand Andy's feelings about whether or not its the 'same' axe. I also love how the axe is obviously the symbol of the franchise and hugely important, but you never get a sense of exactly how important it is to Andy until you read the story.

I love the entire Ship of Theseus theme, and how it feels so natural that for Andy she has to get attached to the idea of things rather than the things themselves because she'll always outlive the things themselves-- the axe is symbolically her mom's axe, even if physically it isn't. And I love how she clearly clings to that concept so tightly. "This is the labrys she held in her hands...." IT GETS ME.

And the fact that this sense of BELONGING, of FAMILY, of CULTURE is so important to Andy that she clings to it (figuratively and literally) with both hands. And of course it's important to her, she spent so long alone that the woman doesn't even remember her birth name. That axe (or the idea of that axe) is all she has left of her mother and that family/culture she was born into.

PLUS on that note I love how Andy doesn't remember if her mom was her actual biological mother, but it doesn't matter to her. This woman was her mother in all the ways that counted. And how her mom BETRAYED AND KILLED Andy but Andy loved her so much that she avenged her and carried her axe for thousands of years. THOUSANDS OF YEARS!!!!!!

I also loved how the story transcends the timeline of the whole franchise and seeing Andy through the years. Loved seeing her with the varying squads and with varying axes. Also baby Andy was so cute. It was cool seeing her so young. like holy fuck. Andromache The Scythian, Immortal Warrior (but smol). Love that.

Also I think this one is one of the few ttt stories that doesn't suffer from length problems.

tldr: goddammit greg you've done it again.

2 Zanzibar and Other Harbors

Zanzibar my beloved. I've said before, but it's downright comedic how little regard there was for Joe and Nicky's character designs in this story. The same person who does the colors for the regular comic did the colors for this one too, and you can tell, every panel of this story was Beautiful.

Ik there was A Lot of criticism of this one (lmao @ how the fandom had no idea what was to come) but I thought a lot of The Discourse was a bit dramatic. I did think Nicky came off as a little oblivious to Joe's feelings in this story, but I've said before, I honestly think that was a 'tone not translating' thing. It felt like Nicky was nagging Joe for [checks notes] saving innocent people, but Joe was so amused by Nicky's complaints I really do think it was supposed to come off as teasing.

Plus I know the 'Joe running off into danger and Nicky reluctantly following' dynamic wasn't popular (I'm a pretty meh on it meself) but I did love how Joe's impulsiveness (if you want to call it that) was interpreted as heroism and not hot-hotheadedness. All of the examples Nicky and Joe talked about included Joe explicitly saving people. (and it also took A Lot for the nazi to actually provoke Joe).

I also feel like their characterization here was closest to the movie canon-- the bit where they hear the woman scream and Joe goes running in to save her while Nicky swoops in on Joe's heels to comfort her while Joe and the nazi were fighting reminds me of the train car scene. Joe had suggested First that they go find Nile because she needed to be protected, and Nicky later added that Nile probably also needed emotional support. Similar reactions.

But it was So Good, the themes of queer community and the enduring nature of queer culture are Not themes you see in media that often and it was such a delight how it was done. Also it's one of the few more modern TTT stories that has a completely valid excuse for taking place when it did. Chef's kiss.

3 Passchendaele

I love the Duality between seeing baby Andy and then seeing Mama Andy in the very next issue. This story doesn't have a ton of meat to it, but the entire concept of Andy adopting a war orphan straight off the battlefield PLUCKS MY TENDER LITTLE HEARTSTRINGS, and I think it's especially poignant for comic!Andy. I think most people wouldn't think twice about movie!Andy doing something like that but comic Andy is so hardened and almost cruel sometimes, and seeing that even for her the world hasn't beaten all of the compassion from her yet is SO!!!!!!! this woman contains MULTITUDES okay, she's violent and angry and tired and Done but she's also so kind and compassionate and THE STRENGTH OF HER!!!!! Also the idea of her and Yitzhak co-raising a kid together is so damn cute. It was #mysterious pre-Yitzhak-story but now it's cute. holy fuck. It's cute.

& the headbonk panel of her and Zeus lives in my heart. anyways.

4 Many Happy Returns

I Know people weren't thrilled about Booker being in this one, but I've developed a pet-peeve about that: this story was *not* booker-centric. Booker only exists in this story to the extent required to explain the importance of the gesture Nile makes towards him. If there was a story about Booker making some grand gesture of kindness to Nile no one would be saying it was Nile-centric. bc it wouldn't be! Booker exists in this story to explore Nile's kindness, its not about him. I saw that a couple times and it bothered me. anyways.

AAAAAAAAAA I loved this one, the art was beautiful, I loved how Andy Nile and Booker were drawn (like their comic selves but.. more looking like actual people). I loved Andy and Nile's Bants, how Andy wanted to jump right in and Do Violence but Nile was basically telling her to hold her horses.

I feel like I'm just repeating the post I made on this story a few days ago, but I LOVED how Nile's plan revolves not around violence or Cool Mercenary Skills but on Nile's own life skills (as she canonly did a lot of minimum wage job-hopping before the marines in comics canon). Her plan used her skills, not the skills of an immortal warrior, and HER SKILLS were in fact more useful for the situation! lov to see Nile's resourcefulness and planning skills.

AND HOW NILE WAS PROBABLY WATCHING BOOKER??? it's so Much bc 1.) nile knew booker A SINGLE DAY and yet he made such an impression on her emotionally that she had to keep an eye on him and 2.) she said in the movie she wanted Booker to get off free with an apology. Yes she's a member of the team but that doesn't mean she's necessarily going to follow orders like a good little soldier. I also love how she convinced Andy to go along with it. her HEART, her KINDNESS, her THOUGHTFULNESS, UGH.

5 The Bear

Honestly I have like no negative things to say about this one other than a.) character design issues which is less about the story itself and is more of a 'tog comic in general' criticism and b.) too short, but it was supposed to be a tease, so.

But I loved Yitzhak, I wasn't expecting to really like him at all but like I said in my other post, he tickled me. I love characters who are Kind™, especially if they have little reason to be so given their backgrounds. Chef's kiss. Lov him.

6 Bonsai Shokunin

I know this one was a little controversial bc of the outsider POV but whenever I see people upset about that they never point out that the Outsider Guy (the samurai) existed as a reflection on Noriko. His ideas are explained in the text to develop hers. The whole story follows how she gave mercy to a scared young man and in response he murdered Noriko, repeatedly! Who gave him the right to inflict such pain and suffering on the world? In his opinion, the lack of response from the gods was his permission. And for Noriko-- over and over again she dies and suffers because she gave mercy, which lines up with her ideas in FM about how it's their fate to rule mortals and if they don't align with that plan/fate/whatever then they suffer. It shows some background to those ideas and how they developed in her mind outside of Ocean Madness™. Additionally, his idea of 'the Gods have done nothing to strike me down so it's fine if I do these things' kind of explains how Noriko may justify her own morally corrupt actions-- she's died so many times and it's never stuck. Maybe if she did die any of those times, or while she was in the water, maybe that would've been a sign she was doing something right, or at least doing something normal. But she hasn't died. Fate isn't done with Noriko yet. And maybe there's a reason for that. In her mind, it's just not a very pleasant reason, is all.

There were things I was kind of meh about tho. I did kind of wish we saw something of Noriko and the team, or smth explaining the way she was before her dip in the pool-- personality, likes dislikes, etc. but it wasn't bad or anything. It was super vague tho, I had to read it a few times before I got what it was going for. Liked the art. Liked the bonsai metaphor. And of course I Respect the decision to use the 1300s (1200s? I don't remember off the top of my head) rather than using the last 200 years.

7 Strong Medicine

Honestly looking back, this one made me kind of sad because both this one and Bonsai Shokunin explored character's ideas on Fate and The Divine and how that intersects with immortality and I totally thought that theme would be continued, especially with Love Letters. But Then It Wasn't™.

Admittedly.... I had to re-read this one to remember most of it. I liked Booker's ideas on God, 'The conductor of the symphony just may not be very good at his trade' but the plot itself was kind of forgettable. Some fuckin cowboys try to kill a doctor (their second) because he couldn't save their sickly brother. Book tries to stop them, gets killed, and then comes back and kills them all before they get the doctor. Alright. I liked the artstyle because the characters were ugly in a similar way that leandro's are, but way more bearable.

I love the Irony of Booker concluding that there is no such thing as fate or destiny and nothing has meaning, AS HE UNKNOWINGLY SAVES MERRICK'S GRANDFATHER FROM BEING KILLED. Booker getting fucked over by life/god/destiny yet again. It also kind of explains about where the fuck hell Merrick's interest in immortal mercenaries even came from.

I originally had this one a lot higher and then I thought about it and moved it down like two spots.

8 Never Gets Old

I liked seeing Booker interact with his kid. And we got a name for the kid! Philippe was a little bitch though, he was a little obnoxious. I liked how Booker was so thrilled to experience a restaurant with his kid (and since we know he was there before, it can be assumed he went with all of his kids and yet he was so charmed each time). It fits with his line to Nicky in the moon landing story about how you don't appreciate beautiful things 'unless you have someone to share them with'. It was charming to see Booker interact with his kid, and to see him so happy. Also lmao @ Booker's big fat Ye Olde Crush on Andy.

However at the same time it was like.. of all the things to write about,,, I guess? Booker's Night Out...... alright. Especially since Book had so many stories.

I don't know, it was alright. The old man killing him really came out of nowhere, (but the 'Salut, asshole!' panel was funny tho).

9 How To Make a Ghost Town

I've hit a point where talking about these stories has gotten less fun. I liked this one but I felt like Achilles getting lynched was not really necessary for a story that was already tragic (a story that already involved Achilles doing a lot of suffering at the hand of bigots). When we first got the blurb for this story I thought it would be about Andy returning to the squad and making friends with Booker after losing Achilles and them butting heads on the idea of family and when to cut off ties. So a little bit of my underwhelmedness about this one might be just my expectations being different.

Honestly I was pretty interested in Andy and Achilles' relationship and I would've liked to see more of them-- like, what was their dynamic like? What did they love about each other?

But anyways Andy leaving and Achilles getting killed anyways feels so pointlessly tragic (which I suppose is the point..... I don't like tragedies) she left to save him and yet people killed him anyway. Meh.

I did love the bits about Andy wanting to have a domestic life (Andy and her multitudes again) and the little detail about how she buried her axe near the road but he buried his guns under his bed-- he was an escaped slave, he never had the luxury of assuredness like Andy did. It was a sad story.

10 Lacus Solitudinis

'You put this one above love letters crim??? how could you???' easy, lmao.

There was stuff in this one I liked. But to talk about stuff I didn't like: (I'll keep it brief, I know ragging on this story has been done time and time again)

UH, setting aside the 6 year cold shoulder between Joe and Nicky, I thought their chosen method of conflict resolution was... bad at best. Nicky's inability to talk about his feelings was also annoying, especially since the entire point of this story is a fight Joe and Nicky had, and yet we don't get both sides to the story, which is...... important? That fact is especially annoying bc in the absence of Nicky explaining his side of the story, it's absolutely a possible (and admittedly probably unintentional) interpretation of the text that we do get that Joe routinely resolves conflict between him and Nicky by simply cutting Nicky out of his life entirely until Nicky just. caves? Even if it takes years?

WHICH i could get into that interpretation and how fucked up i find it. but im not going to. out of restraint.

I don't know, I think there are a lot of interesting ways to go about this conflict but 'Nicky wants to kill a guy and Joe refuses to acknowledge his existence until he stops because he thinks Nicky is too much of a Good Boy to get his hands dirty like that' ('I wont watch as the world turns his (...) compassion into something ugly'. ) wasn't.. how I would've done it. (I mean you know Joe doesn't give a shit about what Nicky is doing in a moral way, because Joe doesn't even care or mention that Booker is killing those cops too. Joe only cares because he doesn't like the idea of Nicky changing in a way he finds undesirable.)

admittedly I've said before, I do like the emphasis Joe's reaction puts on Nicky's kindness. Joe has a complete inability to cope with Nicky simply Not Being Kind. It speaks to the steadiness of Nicky's compassion all those years. but still that fact doesn't make it the conflict feel worth it

hm. I said I would be brief and I wasn't.

oh well. basically I thought there was interesting conflict potential there but it wasn't done the way I would've liked, and the way it was done leaves a lot of disturbing (and again probably unintended) interpretations to lie.

What I did like? Andy and Joe having that pessimist/optimist dynamic. Joe nerding out about science. Andy not being impressed by The Achievements Of Man. I loved Booker needling at Nicky about his outdated slang and also trying to give him Older Brother advice practically in the same breath. I loved Booker giving The Worst relationship advice ever and Nicky being like 'I Will Not Do That, Ever, Thanks.' the family vibes were so good. The Joenicky vibes left a lot to be desired tho.

11 Love Letters

I talked about my problems with Nicky in this story (and Lacus Solitudinis). I don't know, the story isn't bad but I do hold a little bit of a grudge towards it because its very existence begs the existence of a solo Joe story and we didn't get one. If we never got this story, then we could happily count Lacus Solitudinis and Zanzibar as The Joenicky Stories™ and move on with our lives. sigh.

I remember when we first got the blurb for this story I was really curious about why Nicky specifically + the setting, and the answer kind of feels like 'the author had an idea for a story like this and saw ttt as a good enough place to utilize that idea'. Plus I was really underwhelmed by the Romantic Sentiment in the letter. If you look at it line-by-line, the majority of the letter is actually Nicky talking about how lonely and disturbed he is, rather than actual,, yknow,,, Romantic Sentiment. I mean, compare the van speech and this letter and this letter is just kind of meh in comparison. I liked nicky calling joe wise! and I liked the brief sun/moon metaphor! and otherwise it was eh. It didn't even have cute squad banter, which is why Lacus Solitudinis is above this one.

12 An Old Soul

Nun orgy. Nun orgy?????? Nun orgy.......

The whole story felt like a setup to have a nun orgy. Why did Booker have abs? Why did they do that to Andy's nose? ?????? the art was good at least.

nun orgy.

[olderthannetfic]

i can tell who your tog anon is by the content of your last post. so could anyone in tog fandom who’s had the misfortune to live through the top/bottom disk horse that’s been running off and on since this time last year. those of us who arent part of the debate are tired of it. we just want them all, on either side, to stop

it’s not about racism. it’s about a bunch of people seeing kinky stuff that isn’t tailored to their kinks, taking offense as loudly as they can, and then trying to control the fandom narrative by being assholes to anyone who doesn’t agree with them. lgbtmazight was one of your anon’s backers and abettors. they and theirs have made a lot of people unhappy and scared, poc and MENA people included, so i’m not surprised that now the tables are turning they’re feeling a bit worried. they started this shitshow. without them and their friends, the tog fandom would not now be the trashfire it is

i’m aroace. most fic is written by allo and amatonormative people for allo and amatonormative people, and i deal with that every time i go looking for fic on ao3. a lot of fic, explicit and not, is repulsive to me in ways that would never occur to anyone not aspec. i accept that, and i don’t expect any writer to accommodate me for things that would never occur to them and would also be completely contradictory to their own needs. if i click on something that offends me or makes me feel sick i take responsibility for my own experiences and click back out

problematic content exists. so do tags. it’s pretty easy to avoid the content you don’t want see, these days, if you pay attention. and sure, there are racist fics written for tog. there are racist fics on the top!Joe side of things. there are a number of them on the bottom!Joe side as well, and some others that are neither. on the whole, though, there isn’t a huge amount. certainly not as much as one sector of the fandom would like everyone to believe

the person you’re talking to is one of the main bottom!Joe stans. they don’t seem to comprehend that there are people who write a specific character topping because they’re their fave and they identify with them, and they are themselves tops. the discoursers make it all about supposed straight cis women wanting to write a gay couple the same way they would a straight couple. of them wanting to write the partner they identify with on bottom, because of course they are straight cis women and of course the “receiving” partner must be who they identify with. which is a very binary, very ignorant way of viewing the matter

in addition to being aroace i’m afab enby. i’m trans, i’m queer in all senses of the word, i’m kinky as hell in some very weird ways, and i’m an exclusive top. it’s safe to say that i have very different wants and needs from my fic reading and writing than pretty much the entirety of tog fandom, especially given that there are only three tog fics aside from my own that i haven’t backbuttoned out of. i also identify with Joe, so even though it’s not guaranteed that i’ll write him topping since i hc both him and Nicky as vers, there’s a good chance he will top, no matter whose pov i’m writing from. i’m not going to change my tastes; i’m old enough to understand them and be comfortable with that side of myself. i’m not going to apologize for it, either. i don’t know because i don’t interact much within the fandom, but there are probably a lot of people who feel this way. people who are fed up with /both/ the bottom!Joe and the top!Joe stans

i will say, though, that the bottom!Joe side of the fandom has been colonized by Len and her clique, and they’re where most of the toxicity originated. i’m sure your anon saw many people reblogging the call-out post from you and rushed over to your asks to try to do damage control as best they could, as they have with many other blogs in the past. from what i’ve observed, they harass via anon, they don’t act in good faith, and i sincerely hope you don’t become one of their next targets. i’ve been unpleasantly surprised to see the discourse trickling over into blogs i follow that i’d thought were exempt; i admit i’ll be sad if yours becomes the next platform to be absorbed into it

--

Oh, nonnie, when is my tumblr not consumed by discourse?

Don't worry, once I watch the Sarah Z video and post what I think, she'll probably start vaguing about me and then my inbox will be full of Sarah stans screaming at me again instead of TOG anons. Haha.

You could be right about exactly who this anon is. (I wouldn't know. I just read the fic in this fandom. I don't socialize over it usually.) You could be right about their motivations. That's certainly the read I got from their first messages to me. But IDK... I profoundly disagree with their analysis, but I don't think you should discount the possibility that they're some rando lurker you've never heard of and that they're operating in good faith. They don't need to be intentionally misrepresenting things for me to disagree with them.

[tehcoop]

I am an old. I'm an old, old fandom lurker wandering from one fandom to the other for the past (oh God) two decades. I've read in everything from Gundam Wing in my (not that) delinquent high school years to Due South to Stargate Atlantis, Harry Potter, Star Wars, yadda yadda yadda, on and on up to The Witcher, most recently. 

And then The Old Guard.

Guys... Guys.

This movie smacked me in the face and shook me to my core. It was everything I've never known I wanted in an action movie because it just never occurred to me that it might exist. Two female leads! One of them is black! Eighty. Five. Percent female representation behind the scenes. 85%! Amazing character beats. Everyone has their own arc and motivations. No stereotyping. It's just beautiful.

And then there's Joe and Nicky. 

I have never related so hard to characters or to a relationship in my life. I love my badass immortal husbands so much. It's ridiculous. I could gush for hours. I'm nothing like them, of course. I identify as a mostly straight, mostly cis, so white I reflect sunlight (though I hope I'm at least an ally to BIPOC) woman. There's nothing particularly badass about me. But I still relate like hell to these characters. 

I love to laugh like Joe, and completely understand his protective instincts. And then there's Nicky. I relate to him more than any character I can think of currently. I'm introverted and can be kind of intense, but I'm also patient, kind, and nurturing. And if anyone does anything to hurt my family, especially my kids, I can rip you apart with just my words. (Seriously, I think my mother in law is afraid of me now after she got a talking to when I called her out for being shitty to my spouse. Our relationship is Much Better now). 

Most importantly, I am deeply in love with my wonderful spouse who happens to be a trans woman. 

And guys, I'm angry.

Remember, I'm an old. I've been searching for scraps hinting at any kind of queer love story in all kinds of media for decades. And I'm angry because I shouldn't have had to. 

I shouldn't have to read into a maybe not on purpose significant glance. I shouldn't have gotten excited when two characters grabbed each other in anger because clearly they're so in love. I shouldn't have been delighted when an actor bit his lip to hint at a love story in film, or that a writer said that a character was gay years after the books were written. I made myself believe that those little bits of subtext were enough and somehow better than getting it outright because then we can tell our own stories, right guys? I preferred reading fan fiction because I could think of the hot guys I wanted to pair up in the way I wanted. I even stopped watching a lot of gay movies because they were always so sad and full of strife, and I just couldn't relate to them. I just wanted my fluffy romantic comedies. Fan fiction was literally the only place that I could see any kind of healthy queer relationship.

Which is how I got to be almost forty and still identifying as mostly straight even though I'm in a queer as hell relationship. In each of these canon stories, the character's sexuality was part of the conflict, and I was never particularly conflicted about mine. I just liked who I liked and craved a healthy, stable relationship. Or when I did see characters like Klaus in Umbrella Academy (who I love) who is comfortable with their sexuality, he's also so fantastically ridiculous that I can only laugh or cringe at him. I enjoyed many of these stories, but still related more to the Jane Austen heroines I saw in straight stories even while I preferred to chill by reading about say... John and Rodney accidentally making a baby or something.

And then Joe and Nicky come along. And they're beautiful. They're a goddamn interracial, interfaith, committed, happy, unkillable gay couple. In canon. They are the most married. They're 900 plus years of married. Their sexuality and relationship are incredibly important to who they are and to the story without being the conflict of the story. Or without being a walking stereotype of one thing or other. Instead, you have two men casually stating their love for each other, blatantly declaring it, cuddling, and kissing all while they each have their own stories, skills, and motivations. 

I have literally never seen that before. Except at home, in my own house, where my spouse and I get to be our own people, but then support each other, tease each other, and cuddle at the end of the day. It was beautiful to see something that reflected the kind of love I always wanted and now get to have. In canon, on screen. Seeing Joe and Nicky's love makes me so deliriously happy that I'm incredibly angry I've never seen anything like that on screen before. Just imagine what it would have been like seeing that kiss in a crowded theater.

So why am I writing this? Because this movie is important. It's so goddamn important. I'm so happy it exists. And I want you all to know the actual weight of all the years of going without characters like this. What it means to say that I'm furious that I've never seen this before after decades of searching. How ridiculous it is that I still identify as mostly straight possibly because I've never really seen nuanced, flawed, real queer characters before. Instead, I've imagined and created evidence of gay relationships from nothing while ignoring the awful canon hetero relationships my favorite shows have forced on us. All while still unironically sighing over Mr Darcy and Clueless. I'm tired, y'all.

I want to see all the stories with all the people in various configurations. Romances, action, sci fi, fantasy, everything. The Old Guard did it. And they did it well. I'm done with the queer baiting. I don't think I can look at many of the fandoms I have loved throughout the years the same way again. I'm incredibly grateful to Gina Prince-Bythewood, Greg Rucka, Marwan Kanzari, Luca Marinelli, and the rest of the cast and crew for bringing me these already beloved characters. It's so refreshing to finally get what I've really wanted all these years. Representation absolutely fucking matters. 

And now? I'm gonna go back to being a lurker. I'll read all the Old Guard fanfiction I can. I'll watch all the movies, read all the comics because I want more stories like this, dammit. I'll probably go back to giggling over and overanalyzing little character moments in all kinds of fandoms again. Mostly, I'll just go back to quietly taking care of my little family. And I might post something again in another couple of decades when my kids are off to college. And God, do I hope it doesn't take another couple decades to get more characters like this. I hope that my kids get all kinds of stories I never did growing up so that they can figure out who they are and who they relate to before they're almost forty frigging years old. It's about goddamn time.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.

[maghrib-genova]

I just finished watching murder on the orient express and a snippet of martin eden and I just realised that marwan smiles so big like a thousand watt smile, while luca's smile is more subdued like he's shy almost (or maybe that's just martin's character???) And I'm just falling in love with them all over again ❤❤ do you have a favorite of both their movies? I'd love to watch those smiles more often 😍 (also never realised how broad luca's shoulder is wow tog really downplayed his features a lot)

Ah yes. It's all because of their characters they portrayed, that's why you see such a contrast in their smiles. Both of these movies, the characters have entirely different motives to show through their expressions, so it's understandable why there is a stark different in the way they smile.

Since we all know that both of them are such brilliant actors, everything they did in their movies I believe is the deliberate choice in their part to highlight the character personality.

Pierre smiles so widely in the movie because first I think he overall does it because of his job requires him to be all smiling and friendly and he also has something to hide, this is a mask too, this smile.

there is a moment where there is trouble behind his character when he sit on the chair in front of the rooms, waiting, subtle fidgeting on Marwan's part. I mean Pierre didn't have much screentime but all the small moment given to him, Marwan have used it to the best of his ability to showcase all of Pierre's motive as a character.

But yes his megawatt smile was truly enticing in this movie.

Now we move on to Martin. Martin smiles too a couple of time in this movie but there is some irony behind each smiles, some hidden sadness and even in his happiest time, we can still see that lingering gloom in his eyes, like he is not sure if he should smile or not, like this moment will vanish before his eyes and everything is just some sort of illusion.

Compare with this Smile when he played other characters. One is mischievous smile, sexy even though it was simple smile but we can feel his confident and his playfullness when played as Primo and another one was a genuine happy smile for his brother, with twinkle in his eyes when he played as Loris, a loving and caring brother.

Everything is deliberate choice for Luca. Even when he played Nicky.

Ugh..especially when he played nicky. Him not doing much is actually Luca doing most to show that Nicky is reserved and calculating and listening and just observing his surrounding and understanding. Then he laugh freely once when he was only with Joe to show us how much he loves his husband, how happy Joe made him even in the most hopeless place, strapped in torture table. 😘👌

(Also I think this is the most beautiful smile/laugh from Luca in any of his movies I have ever watched he's in. Or I could be bias. Because I love Nicky lol but seriously, this smile is so precious. We have to treasure it.)

Also Yes. Luca has such a broad freaking shoulder. Like it's there so jarringly when you watched his other movies. I think even when he's playing Nicky, his shoulder clearly shows that it's broad as hell.😂 they didn't down play it, it's just limited screentime for Nicky if we didn't pay too much attention we might miss it. That's why have to watch it at least 5 times guy to appreciate tog to the fullest. And to appreciate Luca as Nicky. It's chef's kiss 😘👌

What interesting though. Even though his shoulder was so broad, in that recent video Gina gave to us, when Marwan engulfed him in his embrace, that broad shoulder kind of disappeared. So I don't know who has broader shoulder at this point haha.

I mean, in Marwan's Workout Video or when he played as Majid. It was clear that he also has broad shoulder.

Anyway, it's become quite long and I haven't even answer everything. I got lost in making all the gifset to answer this haha. I have more smiling Luca gifset now. It's a bonus so thank you for this ask.

My personal favorite from all of their movies I have watched :

For Luca Marinelli I think his best role was playing as Primo in Trust FX (2018). He owned that role to the point I don't think anyone can do the character Justice the way he did in that series. He is like a wild untamed animal, like we couldn't predict what he would do next and he is playing the criminal in such a charming way. Everything about Primo screams sexy. It's hard to hate him as a villain of the story because he was so compelling and so interesting you just want to see more of him.

Martin Eden (2019) also such a good role, but it's bleak and it's poetic. Beautiful but decaying and it's hollowing. Something about Martin that makes you feel helpless and hopeless about the world and I love that movie because of it.

Luca as Fabio in They Call Me Jeeg (2015) also such a good role that Luca portrayed, playing a villain too but I still think Primo is the OG. But watching Luca as Fabio was really fun too. He wasn't a conventional villain, he sing, he is clean freak. He is beautiful and deadly too.

Ohhhh It's a long List of all The luca roles I like. I love him playing Roberta (The last man on earth/L'ultimo terrestre 2011) too! He completely become another person like it's hard to find Luca in Roberta, like Roberta is Roberta and Luca is Luca and that's how you know he clearly nail the role when he emerged as another person entirely.

Paolo (Il padre d'Italia 2017) is worth mentioning too because there is something about Paolo that makes you feel too much for him too. The last one is Loris (Up to the world 2013) because after being tortured by Luca's filmography because most of it are sad and bleak and to see something sweet with Luca character didn't have too much baggage to carry, I feel liberated and want to cling on Loris to make me happy 😂

.

For Marwan Kenzari I personally really love him in Wolf (2013) as Majid. It was such an interesting role to play, so many side of majid, so Marwan has a role to showcase all his acting abilities with this role, so much room to show all his emotions and his physicality and the story also I think hits home for Marwan so it feels personal to watch and such a beautiful movie too. Majid will always be my favorite.

Another one from Marwan that I think everyone should watch was when he played real life figure Ashraf Marwan in The Angel (2018) , there is a strong charisma and charm he carry as this character and tenderness and also fierceness, secret in plain sight that makes us keep questioning the motives of the characters even though we already know the story. It's such a fun movie to watch and also one of Marwan best performance.

Marwan as Idris (Instinct 2019) also need to be mentioned because how good he played this unsettling character, it's an interesting watch for sure. Another one is Adrian (what Happened to Monday 2017) though he wasn't the prominent role but he made an impression that stays with you after watching the movie. And the movie also was truly truly good too, He was so handsome here too.

It's been fun answering this question for 2 hours, I hope it's informative enough😂

[fuckyeahisawthat]

the old guard: loneliness, connection and immortality

APPARENTLY I am writing a thing about The Old Guard today.

(Bear in mind that I haven’t read the graphic novel, although I’m eager to now, so this is solely based on the movie and some things I’ve read about the comic in articles about the movie.)

Under the cut for spoilers, although the discussion is fairly general.

The Old Guard is an interesting take on immortality for a whole bunch of reasons. The immortals aren’t invulnerable. They feel pain; they can be injured and experience dying. They just know they’ll come back. (Until they don’t, which is another interesting twist.) They have super-fast healing and regenerative powers, but they don’t really have any other superpowers, so they still experience all the needs and vulnerabilities of regular humans. Which is a very interesting twist, and made me realize just how often I’d seen fast healing paired with super strength or other superpowers. But these characters, other than not being able to die, are basically just humans with a lot of combat experience--hundreds or thousands of years’ worth. This might make them more skilled than most mortal humans, but in a fight they don’t have any advantages of superhuman strength or speed, which makes the fights feel a lot more interesting and grounded than your standard superhero fare. (I love that the older immortals all fight with bladed weapons as well as guns, and in some cases prefer them, because they’ve been using those weapons way longer than guns, but writing about the action style in The Old Guard is a whole other post.)

A lot of the things The Old Guard is meditating on are about the price of immortality--about watching the whole sweep of human history and not knowing if anything you’re doing has had meaning, in terms of making the world a better place. It manages to be a lot more existentially melancholy than your standard mainstream superhero fare, but without slipping into completely dour grimdark territory, and I think a lot of that has to do with how much it has to say about human connection and loneliness.

There’s the inherent isolation of immortality: any mortal you have a relationship with will eventually realize that you’re not aging, and every time, you know they will eventually grow old and die, while you will not. There’s the isolation of keeping your secret, since the film makes clear the many ways immortality can get you in trouble. And there’s the psychological isolation of just knowing you will live your life on a profoundly different time scale than everyone else around you.

In this context, the few connections that are possible, with other immortals, become desperately important. (They literally dream of each other, even before they know each other’s identities, and even when physically separated for a long time.)

When death is off the table as an option, it’s clear that isolation is the worst punishment an immortal can face. “She was alone for a long time,” another character says of Andy, and it’s clear that that was terrible. Quynh’s fate (alone, trapped, and suffering indefinitely) is a horrific extreme version of this, and it’s clear Andy still feels guilty, hundreds of years later, that she stopped looking for her. Dying together, even painfully, is something they can have a dark laugh about, but being separated is a trauma that haunts the whole group.

It’s notable to me that of all the immortals, Nicky and Joe are the ones who seem most well-adjusted and at peace with their relationship to life, death and humanity. Still in love after something like 900 years, they can banter about relaxing in Malta even while held prisoner in a medical lab, with a confidence in their shared future that doesn’t feel fake. (And boy am I glad the narrative reinforces that confidence.) And it’s notable that in the heat of the moment, none of them is willing to leave Booker behind in the lab, even though he betrayed them and led them into the one thing they’ve said they try to avoid at all costs, captivity. Even Booker’s betrayal comes from a desire to make them less alone, although he certainly picked the absolute worst way to go about it.

Nile’s arc is all about her integration into her new found family of immortals--even more, I think, than it’s about realizing and gaining mastery over her superpower, in the way that most superhero origin stories are. She is given the choice to leave, and chooses to go back because she thinks Andy, specifically, might be in danger. (The whole arc of her relationship with Andy is great and deserves its own post.) But it’s clear that severing her ties with her biological family is painful to her; the other immortals understand this, and the narrative doesn’t treat it lightly. Booker’s loss of his children; Copley’s loss of his wife (which is planted in literally the first scene we see him in)--family and human connection are all over the motives of protagonists and antagonists alike. (Even Merrick--it’s his obsession with profit over human life that distinguishes him as the narrative’s true villain and makes other characters turn against him.)

Given all this, Booker’s punishment at the end of the film seems particularly cruel and like the kind of narrative device set up to backfire. It seems obvious that the final scene is setting up Booker and Quynh as the antagonists of a sequel, which I hope we get to see. Booker is wounded and not handling it well; Quynh, I’d imagine, has an extremely understandable desire for some revenge. Given how much we know of their backstories, they could make an extremely sympathetic pair of antagonists.

I don’t know what a potential sequel would bring and if/how it might diverge from the plot of the comic. But what I would love to see is some ending that re-integrates Quynh and Booker into the family (and probably unites them against some new threat in part 3; it’s purportedly a trilogy). It’s the only ending I can think of that wouldn’t be unimaginably cruel to both Quynh and Andy. Even if they’re never explicitly portrayed as being romantically involved (although...I would certainly not complain if they were), I really want to see a resolution to their relationship arc that doesn’t leave them as the unspoken tragic parallel to Nicky and Joe, and doesn’t involve one of them killing the other. It seems like this would be the most thematically resonant option too. I suppose one can hope. (And if not, that’s what fic is for.)

[wisteria-lodge]

Character Analysis: Sorting The Old Guard

@sortinghatchats has a brilliant personality/character analysis system based on the four Hogwarts houses. At this point it’s become much more interesting and nuanced, which is part of why I’m moving away from using the names of the houses.

Here’s how it works. Everyone gets two houses – a Primary House and a Secondary House

YOUR PRIMARY IS YOUR MOTIVE. IT’S WHY YOU DO THINGS.

LION Primary’s sense of morality and ethics comes from inside. Things just feel right or they feel wrong.

BIRD Primary gets their morality and ethics from the world outside them. They decide what they think is right.

BADGER Primary is focused on the good of the group. Who cares if something is technically “moral” if people are getting hurt?

SNAKE Primary is a lot like Badger, but instead of protecting the group, their highest law is the well-being of the individual people they love.

YOUR SECONDARY IS YOUR METHOD. IT’S HOW YOU DO THINGS.

LION Secondary gets their power from being direct, honest, completely themselves. Their “plan” is just keep going until someone stops them. If they see a locked door, they kick it in.

BIRD Secondary collects tools and skills. They build things, find things, learn things. If they see a locked door, they go through their box of keys until they find the right one.

BADGER Secondary is fair, hardworking, and shows up. They’re good at getting people to trust them, and good at getting people to help them. If they see a locked door, they knock.

SNAKE Secondary knows the right mask to wear for each situation. They’re adaptive. They go in the back way. They find the third option.  They’re the ones who know how to pick the locks.

And now let’s talk about The Old Guard. Also, SPOILERS.

***

Nile Freeman is a bright Badger primary, defined by her groups. “I’ve got people who love me,” is the first thing she tells the team. And follows that up with, “I’m a Marine.” We meet her in uniform, part of a squad. Getting back to her family is her main motivation. (And it’s a “my family” thing - not a “my mom” or “my brother” thing.) Family continuity and family history mean everything to Nile, and that’s so Badger. Religion is also used as visual shorthand for “Badger” a lot, and Nile’s got her cross necklace. And she doesn’t want to kill people. Doesn’t matter if they’re the bad people who killed her, they’re still people. Badgers can’t ignore that.

Nile’s challenge is figuring out a way to separate from her family (and become an immortal commando) while still keeping her healthy, shining Badger intact. And she does it by expanding. It’s not just about protecting America and her family anymore. She looks at the wall outlining all the good the Old Guard has done, and her community expands to include them, and all of humanity.

She’s definitely got a Lion secondary. Yes, she’s willing to run into the villain’s stronghold with a bag of guns and not much plan - but this is an action movie, that stuff is kinda a given. I’m thinking more about when she has to lie and say her miraculous healing factor is an experimental skin graft – she hates doing it, she’s so bad at it, you can see her skin crawl. Nile is powerful when she is able to just lay out what she believes. People like Agent Copley and the Afghani women just feel the honesty and conviction bleeding off her, and come around to her way of thinking. 

Nile also has a Bird secondary model. Smashing down walls isn’t appropriate all the time, so a lot of Lion secondaries learn to use one of the mellower secondaries as backup. Nile’s Bird is subtle, but it’s there. She applies her anti-militant training to the situation, and thinks they should “follow the money.” She can identify a Rodin sculpture across a dark cave. And she spends a while trying to reason away the fact that she’s immortal (considering hypnosis, drug trips, all that fun stuff.)

Andromache the Scythian aka “Andy” is also a Badger primary. But a very old, very tired, very burnt one. She’s been protecting humanity for about ten thousand years, and she feels all the people she wasn’t able to save. Andy starts off the film doubting whether any of it mattered, if she was actually able to protect her community at all. Because she can’t protect everyone, she is forced to shrink that community down. She can protect Nile, Joe, Nicky, and Booker – and that has to be enough.

The situation with Quyhn is a good look at the sort of darkness that can live inside a Badger Primary. Because Andy stopped looking. She could have spent hundreds of years pouring money and time into finding Quyhn - and neglected the rest of her team, and by extension humanity. But Andy’s a Badger primary. That’s not a thing she can do.

(A Snake primary would never have stopped. Someone like Nicky would burn the world, if that’s what it took to get Joe back.)

If your preferred weapon is an ax or a hammer, then you’re a Lion secondary. That’s just how it works. You are too direct and too smashy to be anything else. Ms. “I always go first” Andy, leader of the group she thinks of as an army? Even when she’s discouraged and exhausted, her Lion secondary is still so loud. She has a bit of a Bird secondary model: she sets up rules like “we don’t do repeats, it’s too risky,” and establishes code words linked to specific maneuvers. But you can tell she’s a little uncomfortable with that kind of thinking. She wants to hit things with an ax and give inspirational speeches. And also threaten people.

Which means that Andy and Nile match perfectly. They are both Badger Lions with Bird secondary models. And that makes perfect sense. Nile was “born” at the same time Andy lost her immortality. They are both warriors. Nile is the one who will “go first,” when Andy isn’t able to anymore. She’s the one who gets Andy’s ax at the end. She’s the new Andy. Andy’s redemption comes with waking her Badger primary up, and training a replacement. Or as she puts it, “I think you showed up when I lost my immortality so I could remember what it was like (…) that there are people still worth fighting for.”

Nicolò di Genova aka “Nicky” fights for Joe. It really is that simple. His backstory tells you everything you need to know: he fought in the Crusades until he fell in love with a Muslim, and had to choose. On one hand - religion, country, job, society, security. On the other hand - the man he loves. For Nicky the answer is obvious. Because he is such a Snake primary.

As long as he’s with Joe, he’s fine. Agent Copley is trying to explain himself, Nicky doesn’t care. “I’m sure you’re bringing us to the person who paid for your betrayal. There’s a TV [on this plane] Joe!” The villains can talk all they want about the greater good and moral imperatives and changing the world. Nicky is just bored. “A fine justification. I’ve heard it so many times before.” None of that stuff matters to him.

His secondary is harder to spot, underneath the really loud primary and the really loud Lion secondary model. But I think I see a Badger secondary. Nicky’s a caretaker. He brings Andy her favorite candy, sets up Nile for the night and shows her where to sleep. Joe says that Nicky’s heart ���overflows with a kindness of which this world is not worthy,” and I get that they’re in love, but that’s still some serious character testimony. I’m also going to throw in the fact that Nicky’s a sniper. Being a sniper is not like hitting things with an ax. It’s all about getting in place and being careful and patient. Badger secondary traits.

Yusuf Al-Kaysani aka “Joe” actually takes the time to lay out rules he lives by. Which is interesting, because the only other people in this film who do that are the villains. Those guys are not motivated by personal loyalty: they’re either Lion or Bird primaries motivated by “the greater good.” The Old Guard is a very Loyalist movie. When we get our big Theme Scene, the French shopgirl tells us, “Today I put this on your wound. Tomorrow you help someone up when they fall. We’re not meant to be alone.” That’s the ethos of the movie. It’s very Badger.

Joe gets how Badger Primaries work. He gets Andy, and the best example of this is when he comforts her by saying Quyhn “would be insane” by now. He’s basically saying, “you don’t have a responsibility to her the way you have to the rest of us, because she’s not really a person anymore.” It’s dark, but so is Andy, and that line of reasoning would make sense to a Badger primary.

Joe also understands Nicky’s Snake primary. He  knows he’s Nicky’s world, and he never stops demonstrating that. He has Nicky’s back when they fight (Nicky passes things over his shoulder without looking). He has Nicky’s back when they sleep (as the big spoon). He learned Italian for Nicky, and when Nicky is freaked, Joe just shows up with that “his kiss still thrills me, even after a millennia” speech. But that speech is also him explaining his worldview to the guards, the same way he bothers to tell them, “You shot Nicky. You shouldn’t have done that.”

When Nile asks, “Are you good guys or bad guys?” Joe responds, “Depends on the century.” He is interested in those large moral questions, and the answer he has decided on is a combination of Andy’s Badger morality, and Nicky’s Snake morality.

And to go with that really complicated Primary, I think Joe really is just a straightforward Lion secondary (another reason he gets Andy). I mean... he literally headbutts people. 

Sebastian “Booker” Le Livre, whose nickname is a very silly pun, is the most vaguely drawn character. I’m not sure if he turns Nicky and Joe over to Merrick because he wants to die, or because he wants to find a way to help Andy die. Or both. But either way, he is a very burnt Snake primary.

Booker seems to be the only one who kept up contact with his family after learning he was immortal. As a result, he got to watch his son die painfully with “hate and despair in [his] eyes,” blaming his father for not loving him enough to save him. It’s been about 150 years, but Booker is not over this.

That is a very Snake primary love, and when it comes down to it, Booker is a Snake with no people he can throw himself into loving the way he loved his son. (No wonder he drinks). He wants more emotional intimacy from Andy than she is able to give him - not in a romantic way, they have more of a sibling dynamic. But look at the betrayal in his eyes when he learns she’s lost her immortality: “Andy, look at me. Why didn’t you tell me?”

This is the exchange right after Booker betrays the team:

JOE: You selfish piece of shit. NICKY: Joe, leave it, please… BOOKER: What would you know of the weight of all these years alone? JOE: You’re a very pathetic man Booker. NICKY: Joe, stop. BOOKER: You and Nicky always had each other, right?

Nicky is sympathetic. He’s a Snake primary like Booker, he knows what living without a Person must be like, he knows exactly why Booker did what he did. Joe doesn’t. He only sees how Booker has failed to look at the big picture (like Joe would have, because he’s a Bird, that’s how he thinks) and that he made an objectively dumb call. Joe is angry at him for the rest of the movie. But the others, who know what it’s like motivated only by personal loyalty… they kind of get it.

To round things off, Booker is a Bird secondary. You can tell by the way he collects skills. He’s the operation coordinator, the quartermaster, the driver, and the tech guy. He’s also not afraid of a plan with steps. Nile calls him, “the brains of the operation” (although she’s probably being nice). Still, Booker is a good example of the way Bird secondaries aren’t always smart. His plan was pretty objectively terrible, but that was because his primary was so compromised.

tl;dr

Nile – Badger/Lion (Bird model)

Andy – Burnt Badger/Lion (Bird model)

Nicky – Snake/Badger (Lion model for fighting)

Joe – Bird who has built Nicky’s Snake morality, and Andy’s Badger morality into himself/Lion

Booker – Burnt Snake/Bird

[qqueenofhades]

(1/2) Honestly, Hilary, you are a blessing. I want to scream about your amazing Fic, how I love Immortal Husbands and the whole Immortal Family and how I had more fun learning history from your writing than in my whole damn school. But I also want to appreciate your TOG answers and meta. All the more because my friends outside the internet saw TOG as some boring movie with shitty plot and I'm just here in the corner, wanting to scream at someone who will understand about FINALLY seeing...

"(2/2) ...some GOOD queer representation, without throwing stereotypes in our faces, and I can't even begin with the found family trope because THE FEELS. Anyway, what I was trying to say with this rambling: thank you. <3"

....I’m sorry what. Who. Who is saying this. Straight people? I feel like the answer is definitely straight people. Because they have had EIGHTY FUCKING THOUSAND shitty action movies with the Boring White Man Hero, the disposable Muslim-coded (or actually Muslim) villains, the equally disposable eye-candy female love interest who either gets fridged or is secretly evil, Grimdark Everyone Is Secretly Bad And Nothing Matters crap philosophy, Moral Hand Wringing Over Superhero Violence, on and on. So of course they can moan and whine about “iT’s nOt OrIGinAL” and apparently not sufficiently Grimdark and Amoral, and how the dynamics of the team are completely reshuffled in a way that actually doesn’t prioritize THEM, and like.... this is why I never trust media only beloved by straight people, and only ever watch anything after it’s been recommended to me by a trusted queer friend. Because sometimes I remember the difference, and WHOOF.

Because: the gays and people of color DESERVE formulaic action/superhero movies as much as the Generic White Bro (in fact, we can all agree, far more than the Generic White Bro). This is the trap where every piece of media that’s not made by a Mediocre White Man has to be the best all-time of its genre, apparently, rather than using some of the same well-loved storytelling tropes but recoding them and re-deploying them for a more diverse audience. Instead of the Hard Bitten White Man Action Hero, we have Andy and Nile (two women, and Nile as a young Black woman who literally cannot be shot to death, in the year 2020, is fucking revolutionary on its own don’t @ me). As I said in my first meta, even Booker, who comes closest to fulfilling that trope, is made the closest thing to a “villain” there is on the team and even then for entirely sympathetic motives that rest on him having teary-eyed conversations with Nile about how he misses his family and feels like he failed them. His emotions help drive the story in an actually GOOD and useful way, rather than sacrificing everyone else to coddle him through his feeble heterosexual manchildness (why yes, I AM staring directly at the Abomination without blinking). Nobody in the story is EVER penalized or made a fool of for loving their found family (itself an intensely queer trope, even before the queerness of the individual characters) or trying to do the right thing even in the middle of the horrors, and frankly, I just want to consume more media with that as the main message. I’M SO FREAKING TIRED OF GRIMDARK. GOD. IF I WANTED THAT I COULD JUST TURN ON THE NEWS.

And of course, my BELOVED Joe and Nicky: an interracial, interreligious gay couple that has been wildly in love for literal CENTURIES and gives me the opportunity to do things like write the most self-indulgent historical romance backstory fic ever with DVLA. They met in the embodiment of religious conflict and have transcended that, there are never any cruel jokes or expectation for you to congratulate the narrative for being so beneficent as to give you “an exclusively gay moment” (fuck you Disney!). Joe and Nicky’s love story is central both to who they are as characters, doesn’t revolve around them being suffering or being Tormented over being gay (when the cops pull them apart for kissing, they beat the cops the fuck up, WE STAN), gets to unfold naturally in the background of the story with these beautiful little beats of casual intimacy (the SPOONING /clutches heart) and since THEY LITERALLY CANNOT DIE, no chance of the “burying your gays” bullshit. Even when they’re captured first by the bad guys, and I briefly, upon first viewing, worried that they were going the Gay Pain route just for cheap emotional points, they remain constantly united and fighting together and able to do stupid things like flirt when they’re strapped to gurneys by a mad scientist. Then the rest of the team ends up right there with them, so it’s not something that happens to them alone, and Nile comes in to save everyone’s asses, and Joe and Nicky get ANOTHER beautiful moment of fighting the bad guys and being worried about each other and tender even in the middle of this chaos and GOD! MY HEART! MY WHOLE ASS HEART! I LOVE THEM!

And just the fact that it’s not the Evul Mooslim Turrorists or Boilerplate Scary Eastern Europeans or whoever else who are the bad guys, but Big Pharma, nasty white men with too much money and not enough ethics, the CIA (at least tangentially; they could have pushed a lot harder on that but I’ll give Copley individually a pass), and the very forces that want to stop the Old Guard and discount what they do (helping the little people) as worthless... GOD. That is fucking POWERFUL. They literally take the time to explain with Copley’s Conspiracy Wall that even the little things the team does, when they can’t see it themselves, spiral out through centuries and have positive effects down the line. And it’s NOT just in the Western world (no scene in the movie takes place in America, none of the main four characters/heroes are American, and they only go to England when the English villains capture them). They’re in Africa, in Asia, in South America, in all these places where the Western/imperial world order has harmed people the most and in a way that Euro/American audience often gets to forget. On the surface this might be an action movie with Charlize Theron beating up men (which I mean, that alone is fine if you ask me) but there are SO MANY WAYS in which it achieves these deeper moments of meaning and subversion of the narrative that we are so often fed and the ways it could have done this (i.e. the same old Mediocre White Man ways).

I love the fact that the team unabashedly LOVES each other as their family members (I will never get over them all liking to sleep in one room even in their safe house in France), even when they struggle, and that they continue trying to make it right and never consider leaving Booker behind, because he screwed up but they still love him (and he them). I LOVE LOVE LOVE that this movie gave me not just Joe and Nicky but Andy and Quynh: two completely badass queer couples who kick tons of ass and have romance and Drama and rich and well-realized lives outside being used as emotional manipulation or suffering porn for straight people. (I realise it’s only been two weeks since the first one released, but where is my sequel, I have Needs. Especially Andy/Quynh and Quynh/Joe/Nicky needs). I was disappointed that they’d gotten rid of Quynh in a Bad Medieval Way to cause pain for Andy and then shocked and DELIGHTED when she turned up alive in Booker’s apartment at the end of the film. I LOVE that this movie gave me Nile Freeman and everything that she represents in the middle of this hellish year. I even love Booker! BOOKER! When he’s usually the character type I can’t stand and have the least patience with!

So yes. I have watched it three times already. I am sure I am going to watch it several times more. It just makes me so happy.

[alostsock]

Ti voglio bene.

For @socvrates (who also betad this so THANK YOU)

Falls somewhere between What you won’t let them see. and For everyone but you.

Summary/Snippet: Nile knows something is wrong, and she knows she can’t fix it with breakfast, but she is definitely going to try.

TW: depression/anxiety, disordered eating

Nile once tries to explain to Nicky that he’s the mom-friend.

His immediate reaction is to apologize, trying to reassure her that he wasn’t trying to fill a role that doesn’t need filling, that he didn’t mean to overstep, that he was just worried about her.

She reassures him with a teary smile and a tight hug that he’s fine, and then tries to explain to him that it’s just a thing people say when there’s a friend in the group who tends to be the most responsible or protective or caring - the one who “mothers” the rest of them.

She doesn’t think he fully understood, but she does see his eyes go impossibly soft when she calls them friends.

She means it, though.

He seems to wake up every day with the sun, and always has breakfast ready and waiting by the time she (and eventually Andy and Joe) make their way downstairs.

He also very quickly picked up what she did and didn’t like, even though she never complained about anything and always accepted what he offered with a smile and a thank you. She wonders if he was reading her micro-expressions, or taking note of how much she ate, and of what. She thinks that sounds like something he’d do - Nicky is detail oriented personified.

It becomes a routine.

Every day she will wake up and get ready and make her way downstairs and Nicky will be waiting with breakfast and coffee just how she likes it (still hot, too - at the beginning, she thinks she just keeps getting lucky, but then she realizes he probably hears her get up and start moving around and has realized how long her morning routine usually takes).

Some days they chat, other days he seems to sense that she isn’t quite awake enough for talking and lets her eat her breakfast undisturbed as he reads a book in companionable silence. On the days she wants to talk about her dreams (good or bad), he listens, and on the days when she needs a distraction, he’s got 900 years of small-talk and funny stories to regale her with.

He’s so reliable and steady and solidly there for her that she flounders the first morning she comes downstairs and the kitchen is empty. He comes downstairs eventually, but he doesn’t make (or eat) anything, only moving to the couch to pick up a book that Nile swears he doesn’t actually read.

There’s a worried crease on Joe’s brow.

It happens again the next day. Joe and Andy are sharing concerned looks and while Nicky is usually quiet, Nile can’t shake the feeling that the quiet is different, somehow.

When she wakes up and finds the kitchen empty for the third time, she gets dressed and heads out.

---

A little over an hour later she makes her way back into the house, her arms laden with bags. Careful not to make too much noise she sets everything down and gets to work.

Nile sets out a plate of waffles on the kitchen table before turning back to the waffle maker. Nobody is up yet. Maybe she should leave the rest of the batter and wait until they are so that the waffles are fresh. She looks out at her spread.

Waffles, syrup, fruit… she’ll make coffee just how she knows each of them likes it.

She feels inexplicably nervous - she knows nobody is going to get mad at her for making breakfast, but she very desperately wants to get it just right. Besides, her love language has always been food, and she has a suspicion that these centuries-old people could do with some love right now.

She decides that she should add something with protein, so she gets to work making eggs.

-----

She’s just setting out the eggs when Joe makes his way down the stairs, blearily rubbing his eyes. As much as Nicky is a morning person, Nile learned very quickly that Joe is not. In fact, these past few days are some of the only times she’s ever seen Joe awake before Nicky.

Joe pauses on the last step when he sees the breakfast she’s set out on the table. He blinks a few times before a wide smile spreads across his face, an impossibly soft look in his eyes.

“Andy!” he hollers in the direction of the bedrooms, “Come get it while it’s still hot!” A few moments later Andy shuffles grumpily down the hallway and down the steps, coming up behind Joe. Joe presses a kiss to her cheek before guiding her past him and heading back up the stairs.

Andy heads straight for the coffee maker before Nile cuts her off, pressing the already-prepared mug into Andy’s hands. Andy glances down at it with thinly veiled suspicion.

Nile snorts. “Black, I promise. No sugar, no surprises, and it’s the blend you like.”

Andy takes a sip with narrowed eyes before giving Nile a begrudging nod of approval. She takes another sip before clapping Nile’s shoulder and heading for her usual seat at the table.

Andy starts digging in immediately, but Nile hesitates. Joe isn’t back yet and Nicky hasn’t come down at all, and really, while she’s happy to make breakfast for all of them, she knows deep down that the real motivation behind it was trying to do something for Nicky - to try to repay the kindness he has shown her every morning when something is so clearly off.

When another minute passes and there is still no sign of them she reluctantly sits down across from Andy and picks up her own cup of coffee.

Ten more minutes pass before Joe and Nicky make their way down the stairs, Joe’s arm slung around Nicky’s shoulders, subtly ushering him forwards. They’re both still in pyjamas (she’s learned that they don’t actually sleep in jeans when they don’t need to), but while the rest of them are in t-shirts (in her opinion the house is actually quite warm) Nicky is swimming in an oversized sweatshirt, his hands tucked into the sleeves.

Something is wrong.

Still, Nicky gives her a small smile, no different than any other day (although usually she is the one dragging herself down the stairs) before letting Joe lead him to a seat at the table.

Just as she opens her mouth to say something, Joe glances into his coffee cup and, after taking a look at the one in front of Nicky, swaps them with a nod before looking back up at Nile.

“This is lovely, Nile, thank you,” he beams at her.

She manages a smile back, but can’t completely tear her focus away from Nicky who is staring down at his cup of coffee, a blank look on his face. When he looks up and catches her watching he quirks his lips at her before quickly taking a sip of coffee and murmuring his approval. It’s no more and no less than Nicky’s usual subtle half-smile, but Nile can’t shake the feeling that something empty lingers behind his eyes.

“So, dear Nile, what should we put on these?” Joe pulls her attention to him as he enthusiastically serves plain waffles onto his and Nicky’s plates.

Nile frowns, confused. “You’ve… never had waffles before?” Surely they have.

Joe laughs. “Yes, yes, of course we have, but we have never had your waffles before. So, tell us, how does Ms. Nile Freeman from Chicago suggest that we eat the waffles she has so kindly and skillfully prepared for us on this lovely morning?”

Nile huffs out a laugh. “Um, well… I like mine with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and fruit, usually. Sometimes I change it up, but… yeah. I’d say that’s my favourite.”

Joe nods decisively before reaching out to pick up the suggested toppings and covering his waffle in them. Nile raises an eyebrow at the mountain of whipped cream he finishes with but he pays her no mind, reaching over to pull Nicky’s plate closer to him. He’s much more conservative with Nicky’s waffle, and seems to deliberately leave half of it completely plain. On the other half, he artfully places a few berries before lightly drizzling chocolate sauce over it and placing a dollop of whipped cream on the plate beside the waffle. Nile can’t help but notice that, as he pushes the plate back towards Nicky, his other hand is rubbing soothing circles on Nicky’s thigh.

Both Joe and Andy devour their food, eagerly going for seconds and thirds.

Nicky is clearly picking at his food, but every time he catches her watching he makes sure to take a bite and give her a small smile. She notes that most of what he eats is from the plain side of the waffle, but that he does manage to eat all of the fruit. She makes a mental note for tomorrow. Nile knows something is wrong, and she knows she can’t fix it with breakfast, but she is definitely going to try.

Besides, a little food and a lot of love definitely can’t hurt.

[captainpikeachu]

Differences between The Old Guard film & Book 1 of the comics (and how I feel about the changes)

Long story short, I actually do prefer the film version of the story, as I think it makes for stronger character dynamics established upfront and for greater character growth and arcs throughout the story.

I’ll list the differences here and I will speak about how each of these changes I think affects the story we saw on film versus the one we got in the comics, and how these changes may play into character dynamics and arcs if a sequel film were to happen.

1. No Baklava tasting scene.

In the comics, the team meets up at some outside cafe to speak about meeting Copley and teases Andy a bit about her “hall of fame” of bed partners. In the film, we have the Baklava tasting scene when everyone meets up at the hotel. The big difference between these two scenarios is that in the comics, it is to set up the job, and to comment upon Andy’s rotating door of bed partners which we are shown over the opening narration. But the film forgoes to the more sexualized focus on Andy’s love life to explore and show visually the bond of these 4 immortals. Using the baklava tasting, we immediately establish the character personalities and dynamics of the team, making us more invested in this group and their bonds with each other - all without sexualizing Andy, in fact, there’s more than a few times in the comics where Andy’s love life gets randomly brought up, including Andy saying Nile’s brother is hot upon seeing his photo. The film thankfully decided to focus on the character dynamics instead.

2. In the comics, it’s Nicky and Andy who meet Copley instead of Booker and Andy. (also Booker and Andy’s dynamic)

This change in the film where we have Booker and Andy meeting Copley instead is a continuation of the film’s intention to highlight Booker and Andy’s close dynamic. In fact, it begins even earlier as the movie opens with Andy and Booker meeting up first and Andy giving Booker the first edition Don Quixote. And this continues throughout the film where Booker basically acts as Andy’s right hand man, and this dynamic remains even through Booker’s betrayal and in the ending scene where they part ways. The little change with a different character swap doesn’t seem very important until you see the whole film and realizes that a lot of hinges on selling the audience of Booker and Andy’s relationship and Booker’s love for the team. And this is where the film, aware of each character’s full arc, changes things around to make sure every scene in the film is used to push character arcs into the right resolution at the end.

3. Killbox scene - in comics, team is still standing on their feet. 

I noted upon reading the comics that when the team gets shot by the soldiers in that killbox ambush, the team are still on their feet, and Andy verbally signals “it’s our turn” before attacking. In the film, our team actually falls and dies, the soldiers then turn away from the group as the team regenerates and between a few shared gazes, wordlessly get up and attack. This is another indication of the film’s intention to SHOW not TELL. Through the visual language the film uses, we immediately not only see that our team can fall and die and the healing takes time and is not pleasant, but also that they move as a unit without so much as a word. And just like that baklava scene in the beginning of the movie, it builds up the team’s relationship and speaks to their years together without having to dump any exposition.

4. No Andy and Nile fight scene on the plane. (also Andy and Nile’s dynamic)

Not only does Nile not have a fight scene with Andy, for pretty much the entire run of Book 1, Nile really does not exhibit much agency beyond just following along with everyone else. Sure she asks questions and such, but her relationship with Andy is not built up much, and Nile seems to only be there because she’s got nowhere else to go, she seems to just serve as a plot point that happens and less as a character. The film, on the other hand, carefully crafts an arc for Andy and Nile to go on, culminating in Andy and Nile sharing that scene where Andy expresses that she now knows why Nile appeared when Andy lost her immortality. We see their relationship grow and change throughout the film, we see Nile react to Andy and eventually teaching Andy about how to live again. 

5. Nile does not meet Nicky and Joe before their kidnapping.

In the comics, Nile does not meet Nicky and Joe until the very end fight when they’re all escaping from Merrick’s place. Nile basically has no relationship with Nicky and Joe, barely even knows them, because when she comes to the safehouse with Andy, Nicky and Joe were already kidnapped. The film instead changes scenes around where Nile does return with Andy and meet the team, spends at least some time with them before Nicky and Joe get kidnapped. I tweeted to the director Gina Prince-Bythewood to ask her about the decision to have Nile meet Nicky and Joe before the attack on the safehouse, and she confirmed my belief that it was to establish a stronger family/team dynamic to the audience. After all, if your main cast of characters don’t even know each other’s names until literally the last act of the movie, it is very difficult to make the team/family dynamic believable. This change of having Nile knowing Nicky and Joe establishes Nile’s further relationship and attachment to the team, that they aren’t just two random strangers that she doesn’t even know. And it builds up this team of 5 so that when they do go on to escape from Merrick’s labs at the end, we are cheering for this team to kick ass together, rather than wondering why Nile would care to go rescue two strangers she’s never met.

6. Copley is not sympathetic.

Copley in the comics is not a sympathetic character. While he is not necessarily evil, there is no motivation of grief and loss that drives him to act the way he does. He basically bails on Merrick at the end out of self preservation. In the film, we know that Copley watched his wife die and that pushed him to wanting to create a cure to end suffering, his backstory mirrors Booker’s struggles, in turn creating sympathy for both characters. The fact that Copley in the film is still a decent person makes Booker betraying the team and working with Copley a more palatable and understandable choice, especially as Copley ends up helping Nile get to Merrick’s lab and even ends up serving as the team’s tech/eye-in-the-sky person. This change for Copley’s character serves as another aspect where the film took great care to focus on character motivations and arcs. Copley’s research at the end serves to give Andy a reason to keep fighting, thus helping Andy and the team complete their arcs where they started jaded and tired, but now ready to fight another day.

7. Booker shoots Andy and Nile in revelation of his betrayal.

In the comics, Nile is also there with Andy when Booker turns on them upon meeting up with Copley again. Booker shoots both of them and doesn’t really say much as Copley talks about why they’re doing this. Then Andy basically kills Booker, threatens Copley, and jumps out of a window with Nile and Booker. They get to a desert where Booker and Andy proceed to shoot each other again multiple times until Nile stops them and Booker tells them why he betrayed the team. This chain of events is obviously different in the film, and this difference sharply contrasts Booker and Andy’s relationship in the comics as opposed to what they are in the film. In the film, when Booker shoots Andy and she’s tied up, he keeps on trying to explain to her why he’s doing this, Andy’s reaction is pained and heartbroken, and Booker is too and later on panics when she won’t stop bleeding. When Merrick’s men arrive, he tries to get them to leave her alone and fights to get to her when they take them both. This change, along with Andy’s more touching reaction to finding Booker injured at the safehouse, paints a more deep and nuanced bond between the two of them. Instead of them just repeatedly yelling and shooting at each other, we actually get to see them talk, we see them being gentle and physically caring towards each other. This shows to an audience a relationship that feels deeper and more loving than the comics which seem almost colder in comparison. And this deep bond the film creates plays into both Andy and Booker’s character arcs at the end of the film upon their separation. Again, the film takes care to focus on character relationships, and allow those relationships to fully form and fully reach the resolution that befits the character arcs. 

8. Merrick is far more despicable and murderous. (also his doctor character is toned down)

Merrick in the comics is literally psychotic. He not only stabs Joe once, but multiple times, and proceeds to do the same to Nicky. And he constantly talks about wanting to hurt them and takes pleasure in it. Merrick in the film is not only smaller in stature than his buff comics counterpart, he’s also less physically violent. Sure he stabbed Joe because he wanted to see the evidence himself and he’s hardly that caring about ethics, but he still seems like an otherwise normal if not just simply greedy CEO type, not psychotic serial murderer type. This difference in toning down the character ultimately I think serves the film better because as Copley is more sympathetic, having him work with someone who is clearly and obviously behaving like a murdering lunatic would be really hard to swallow. This toning down of characters also happens with the doctor. In the comics, Doctor Ivan is basically just stated to not care about ethics, while Doctor Kozak in the film does share a talk about ethics and morality with Nicky where she says she believes they can be used to save the world. Again, the film seems intent on giving every character an understandable motivation, even among the villains of the story, which grounds the film in a feeling of reality, because no one is so outlandishly just being an evil mustache twirling villain. This change also produces some possible loose ends for the film’s sequel, as while the comics version of the doctor is dead, the film version only got whacked on the head by Nile, not outright killed so she may pop back up again in the sequel.

9. Nile does not get her solo fight.

In the comics, because Nile escapes from Copley with Andy and Booker, she returns with them to go find Nicky and Joe at Merrick’s place in Dubai. So she is never actually on her own at all in the comics. As I spoke about before, Nile’s character in the comics just tagged along, never really getting to come into her own. There is really no arc for Nile, whereas the film did the opposite. Because the film lets her have an arc, and lets her making the decision to join the team be something she comes to terms with on her own choice, this agency affords Nile growth that the comics doesn’t give her. Her solo fight is the culmination of her coming into her own power and acceptance. Once again, the film is consistent on ensuring that the characters change and grow and have arcs. This character building makes Nile a much more interesting and complex character than one note. Nile also gets to kill Merrick while protecting Andy and mirroring the plane moment from earlier in the film, while in the comics, everyone kills Merrick together. That moment in the comics did not serve the narrative catharsis that Nile taking out Merrick did.

10. Andy is mortal.

In the comics, Andy starts immortal and jaded, and ends the story really not much changed at all. Other than defeating a villain, you really don’t get the feeling that she’s changed from the experience. There is no revelation of her purpose, she just kinda does what she has to do, even if that means threatening an old woman. Andy in the film clearly starts out feeling lost in her purpose, but gradually through Nile’s joining of the team and Booker’s betrayal and her own mortality, she starts to see what her purpose is and wanting to be alive again. The scene of Andy at the store with the employee who helps bandage her up doesn’t exist in the comics because Andy is not mortal, therefore there is no sudden questioning of why, of re-evaluating her feelings about humanity. But the film takes the time to make Andy confront this, forces Andy to not only face it but learn from it. This change not only gives the story more stakes, but also allows Andy to have a character arc that affords her growth and an answer to her opening narration. It also makes Nile more than a plot point and her joining the team be an important narrative that makes an important change.

11. We never see Joe and Nicky’s reaction to Booker’s betrayal.

In the comics, because Andy and Booker never gets captured, when the team meets back up together, Nicky and Joe has no idea of the betrayal. And we never see them find out because after they kill Merrick, the next scene is them exiling Booker. In the film however, we do see Joe reacting angrily to Booker, we once again get a look into their dynamic and Booker pointing out how Nicky and Joe always had each other, meanwhile Nicky is trying to calm Joe down to stop him from saying something that he might regret later. This change is a further way that this film builds upon the established character dynamics. We as the audience see their reactions, see their humanity, and see them behave as a family would when feeling betrayal. But also that Andy has changed from that jaded tired person into someone ready to fight again when she tells Booker that they’ve been doing a shitty job of living and he needs to get up and stop wallowing in his self pity and pain. This makes their separation hit harder at the end because there are real emotions on all sides. Like all families, feelings can be complicated but there is also care and love. At the end, we see Booker nod to Joe as they all leave, signaling that despite the anger and chasm between them right now, they are still family. The film once again reorients the story to focus on character relationship, on selling the audience this familial bond, because if we don’t believe in it, then Booker’s redemption falls apart, and the film in many ways falls apart.

12. Noriko and Lykon.

Now the obvious change here is casting. Noriko is Japanese in the comics and her film counterpart Quynh is played by a Vietnamese actress. And Lykon is white in the comics whereas in the film he is portrayed by a Black actor. In the comics, Noriko fell overboard during a storm. In the film, due to budget constraints, they went with her being dropped into the ocean locked in an iron maiden. In the comics, Lykon spent over 2000 years with Andy before he died during the Renaissance, meaning he would have met Nicky and Joe. In the film and the history clips that Netflix posted, Lykon died before Nicky and Joe were immortal. Obviously with Lykon, it ultimately does not affect the story either way since he is dead, it’s just clearly the film changed the years he spent with Andy to avoid any confusions and to make things a little more simple in streamlining the team’s history. But the change with Noriko/Quynh is a much bigger thing. Firstly, character motivation - it’s one thing to be lost during a storm and another thing to be purposefully locked into an iron coffin and left in the ocean to suffer. This difference could make the difference between how Noriko reacts to Andy and the team in the comics, and how Quynh will react to everyone in the film. Secondly, because of the way the film presents Andy and Booker’s bond and especially now with Andy’s mortality, which the comics does not have, this could spell a big divergence in what a sequel could do with Booker and Quynh’s interactions. Because Booker would still be guilty over Andy’s mortality, and he would be more reluctant to do anything that could hurt Andy and the team, leaving me to suspect that he is less likely to go towards a villain route in betraying the team again. Whatever Quynh may get him to do is likely going to be out of force/coercion, if Quynh’s intention is less than good.

---------------

So these are just some of the big differences that I feel like affects the story ultimately told in the comics and the film. I did enjoy Book 1 of the comic and I am planning to get Book 2 once the collection is out. But I think the film’s changes really made it a focus on enhancing the character relationships and allowing individual characters to have their own arcs of growth. The comic tells a great action fare. But the film’s changes effused more humanity into the characters in a way that I feel the comic lacked. The film also really make you question the issue of immortality and what it all means and how it effects people while the comic focused on more of the action adventure story with the immortality as more or less a tool than really a theme.

Ultimately, I think the changes in the film took what worked in the comics and really elevated the story.

[microsuedemouse]

man it has been a MINUTE since I made my own post about anything fandom-related on this website but @suzirya is blogging about The Old Guard and I haven’t seen anyone else talking about it really and I’ve got. some thoughts

I had literally never heard of this movie at all until a few nights ago when we were eating dinner in the living room and my dad pulled it up and said ‘hey I want to watch this’ and played the trailer for my brother and me. We were pretty much like yeah, sure, we all enjoy a good action flick, and aside from my other brother (who was occupied with D&D) it ended up being the whole family watching it. and I enjoyed it WAY more than I’d anticipated, especially for something I’d never heard about.

if you don’t know what I’m talking about: drop what you’re doing and go watch The Old Guard on Netflix. (it’s a Netflix original so yes it will be there.) it’s a very fun and good action film based on a series of graphic novels about a small group of immortals trying to do what’s right. there are many selling points but one of them is that it will be very good for your little gay soul, bc Charlize Theron stars (in a character with no explicitly-stated romances but lots of relationships that will make you Feel Things) and two of the other main characters are two men who met during the Crusades and are just amazingly in love with each other. And not in a vague way that the straights can interpret as Powerful Friendship. They are explicitly in love with each other and so devoted and ugh.

ANYWAY. putting the rest of my chattering under a cut bc spoilers and also I’m a wordy piece of shit

1 - early in this movie I was thinking about how glad I am that Charlize Theron has stepped into this role of like... cool female action star, but also, her characters are never super sexed up. almost any female characters I can think of in action movies, if they’re part of the action rather than victims/bystanders, are always made sexy. even when they’re Strong sexy, they’re still... a lot sometimes? I was thinking especially of some Angelina Jolie stuff, Scarlett Johanssen, etc. there are probably lots of exceptions to this that I just don’t know but still - we’ve had Theron in several roles like this recently, and appearance-wise she’s treated with the same respect as her male counterparts, which is so fucking cool and also such a fucking relief. we all love beautiful ladies, obviously, but it’s so SO good to see our female heroes just doing their jobs, without us ever being made aware of their sexuality.

and as the movie went on this was hitting me more and more, and I was also thinking it about... everyone? like. the other female lead, played by KiKi Layne, was arguably more feminine than Theron but not any more sexualised. even once she’s out of her army fatigues she’s dressed with practicality in mind, and again, we never have her female-ness pointed out to us. and I was so about every bit of that. both objectively and as a person whose relationship to female-ness and femininity is kind of weird, it’s such a good thing to see leading women whose gender and appearances and bodies aren’t being focussed on that way.

and as a sidebar to that, while I wouldn’t describe any of the prominent male characters as unattractive by any means, none of them were like... Marvel-actor hot. and I just, idk, especially in action/superhero movies, that’s refreshing to me. a lot of them looked like Regular Dudes in a way that I find very appealing.

2 - can we TALK about Joe and Nicky. holy shit. my brother and I kept leaning over to each other to be like ‘if anything happens to either of them I’ll riot.’ I MEAN.

we got a genuine, explicit, on-screen established romance between these men. it was not implied, it was not just how the actors played it in the hopes that people would catch on - it was right there. they hold each other to sleep, they kiss each other with such love, they talk to other characters about how much they adore each other. they met during the Crusades. they’ve been in love for centuries! and they’re so sweet, so devoted, so adoring! and they never have any arguments or tension to further the plot (one of my personal most-hated plot devices in any story with an established relationship). they just spend this movie loving each other, protecting each other and their weird little family, doing anything they can for each other. they’re taken prisoner and spend their time awake joking and making each other smile. and the one singular bit of casual homophobia they encounter on-screen is met with a declaration of love so heartfelt and intense that the guy who made the shitty comment literally doesn’t know what to say - which is a brief but extremely good scene in the movie, imo.

oh, also worth noting: this romance is biracial and interfaith (inasmuch as either of them may be men of faith after being alive for centuries). just to add to how good this is to see on-screen. all of this on top of them being IMMORTAL AND UNKILLABLE. NO GAYS BURIED HERE

2.5 - can I talk for a second about how goddamn much I love seeing non-hetero romance in genre fiction!!! I know it’s getting easier to find, but still. genre fiction is very much my domain and I love seeing queer romance there, especially when it’s simply an accepted fact and the characters’ queerness isn’t central to the story. narratives about queerness are good and important and serve a function but most of them aren’t really my thing, personally. a story that’s about all kinds of other things but also has queer characters there, being themselves, being in love, is so 1000% my shit.

3 - also? Charlize Theron’s character, Andy?? fascinating from a queer perspective. she doesn’t have any explicitly-stated romance with anyone, but her relationships with other characters are so compelling and so interesting. The backstory about her and another immortal, Quynh, very very distinctly gives you the impression that they were women in love. everything about Andy’s guilt and bitterness over not having been able to find/save Quynh feels so much like there was a romance there. it could have been platonic or familial - they were together, without anyone else, for centuries at least, and therefore obviously developed a very deep love - but the way Andy talks about Quynh it feels so much like there was something left unsaid, or unresolved.

also, her scene with the clerk in the pharmacy. oh my god. this woman clearly recognises that whatever is going on with Andy, something is wrong, and she offers her help, no questions asked. she takes her into the back room and patches up her wound. this scene has such an inherent intimacy because of the close quarters and the privacy and the act taking place, but... there’s also this really interesting connection happening between them, where they recognise something in one another but don’t state it. (personally, I couldn’t help wondering if the clerk was a domestic abuse survivor, maybe? but there are so many ways you could interpret her character from her behaviour and dialogue in that scene, and I’d love to see other people’s takes.)

and then on the other hand you have her relationship with Booker, who’s been with her the longest out of any of the living immortals. they’re incredible. their relationship is so, so interesting and well-depicted! they have such chemistry, that you can easily read as romantic or platonic. they’ve been together for so many hundreds of years and they work together, trust each other, with such a deep understanding and love and respect. and it never quite tips over into the romance you kind of think it will, which imo only makes it that much more compelling - there are so many directions you could take that dynamic.

4 - and then on the topic of Booker: I am SO into the way his betrayal was handled.

he did, undeniably, betray the others. there’s no argument on that fact. his motivations were understandable (and heartbreaking), even to Andy, though certainly not an excuse. so yes, they were furious with him. reasonably so! but... that didn’t actually break their relationships with him. they didn’t leave him behind in the lab, even if in some ways they might have wanted to. and in the ensuing battle, they were still able to work together and trust each other as they always have. the damage done to their larger relationship was put aside to be dealt with after all of this, as it should be. and even when they did deal with it, what they agreed on was just a century of exile from their group. given the lives they’re all living, that seems like such a mild sentence.

but to me, it makes so much sense. again, these people have lived for centuries, and there are so few of them. they need each other. the bonds they’ve formed over all this time together - the trust, the love, the sense of family - would not only be vital to both their survival and their sanity, but also incredibly difficult to truly break. what he did would seem unforgivable from an outside perspective, and even after that century passed I’m certain he’d have to earn back their trust and respect, but it makes absolute sense that they’d be willing to take him back one day.

god. GOD. I’m sure there’s more I could talk about but this is what I can think of right now and I’ve been typing for like forty minutes probably so I’m done for now but.

god.

this movie and its characters GOT ME, guys. I’m really in it. ugh UGH

[kaydeefalls]

Tagged by @andrea-lyn​ , who is the most astonishingly productive writer I've ever known, which means I've got waaaay slimmer pickings than she did for this one. XD

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (or so) favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

My lofty goal this year was to post 100k words of fic, and I did! I managed just shy of 125k words (and wrote another 40k on my TOG Mini Bang, which won't be posted until Saturday, so I guess it'll jump start my 2021 total instead). That only wound up breaking down into 7 fics + 1 vid, but hey, a few of those fics were on the longer end. So picking of top 5 is more like...side-eyeing my bottom 3. WHATEVER.

1. Travellers from an Antique Land (Old Guard, Joe/Nicky + Andy/Quynh + ensemble)

Canon-divergent AU. Five hundred years ago, they lost Andromache to the sea. Now Quỳnh leads the team, a new immortal just woke up, and some pharmaceutical company is getting a little too interested in their business.

I nattered on about this one in a different askmeme, but look, I love canon-divergent AUs, and I love long plotty fics, and I really, really enjoyed writing this one.

2. life is very long (Old Guard, Joe/Nicky + team)

Andromache tells him: "The Greeks used to have seven different words for love. Well. More, probably. But I remember seven." She shrugs. "There are many ways to love one another, and life is long. We've time enough for them all. It's the only thing that makes it worthwhile." Nicky and his immortal family, over the centuries.

My first foray into TOG fandom, and MAN did I luck out. I hit the sweet spot of posting this a week after the movie hit and JUST as the fandom was taking off, and it got a truly stupid (for me) amount of kudos. But also, I am genuinely fond of this one, and it helped me wrap my head around Nicky as a character (which has served me well since).

3. We'll Show Them All (X-Men, Charles/Erik + Raven)

Pacific Rim AU. Ten years later, the monsters are back, and newly-instated Marshall Charles Xavier needs to pull a team together to prepare for the coming war. That means finding his talented sister a Drift-compatible copilot -- even if that turns out to be his old flame Erik.

It would be wrong for me to not include this, because X-Men is by far my personal longest-running fandom (I'm pretty sure I first posted fic for it in 2002?), and even if I've kind of let it drop off recently, I'm sure it'll pull me back in eventually. Also, I will always be a sucker for an X-Men fusion AU, and Drifting is fun. And the art by @irelise is GORGEOUS.

4. though it was not my task to watch (Old Guard, Joe/Nicky)

"Death always matters. It is not a game, it is not casual, it is real and it is painful and it is not a thing to be chased, not ever!" After Merrick, Nicky can't stand seeing any of them die. It takes Joe a while to put it together.

Wrote this to help myself process personal grief, when a close friend was unexpectedly diagnosed with terminal illness this summer. Kind of hard to go back to it now that he's passed. But still. I'm glad I wrote it. All our gays should be immortal.

5. When It Alteration Finds (Star Wars, Poe/Finn, WIP)

Poe is nine years old when his mark first appears, in an alien script he can't even read. When he's twelve, it…blurs. Like someone took an eraser to an old chalkboard, but couldn't quite scrub it out. That's not the end of their story. (Soulmark!AU. Sometimes it takes a while.)

Look. Did I finish it? No. Do I intend to? Yes, as soon as all these damn challenge deadlines have passed. But I'm still glad I started posting it as a WIP, because I honestly think I would have dropped it entirely if I hadn't forced the external motivation, and I am FOND of this dumb 'verse, okay? Poe and Finn are great and deserved better and I need to figure out how the hell to wrap this fic up without actively rewriting the entirety of TRoS.

Tagging @lindstrom2020, @turtletotem, @ladynox, @kianspo and whoever else wants to celebrate the fact that this year is OVER and you SURVIVED IT and you deserve to brag about the stuff you're proud of!

[wickedpact]

I think we as a collective have finally moved past the 10 things au.....which is simply unacceptable to me so tell us crimberly how do you picture the prom arc going down (the angst, the betrayal, the sheer comedy of everyone nicky could potentially confide in having been in it from the start, the dramatic breakup,,,,,,crimberly I'm thinking)

also for Research purposes i was looking at a copy of the script for the movie and i realized there's a couple bits in there that didnt make it to the screen, and the joenicky vibes of this,ng was so important to Younger Sister bc she was A Freshman Invited To Prom

so for logistics' sake we are going to assume their school does a junior-senior prom. my school did only seniors but im pretty sure we decided nicky was a junior in this.

well. im also pretty sure we decided joe was a senior so he could just invite nicky and it could then be a senior prom. .. .... whatever it doesnt matter

anyways cut bc this ended up longer than i thought it would

freshman!nile gets invited to prom by Jerkface McGee

personally i think that bit where Older Sister gets drunk at the party and dances on the table should go to andy

and the argument abt Heath ledger's ~motivations~ should go to joe and nicky

andy isnt really talking to quynh bs she's embarrassed

nicky isnt really talking to joe bc he's suspicious af of him.

and tht scene where Older Sister's friend gets asked to prom via her obsession with shakespeare (the dress in her locker) should go to andy and quynh. except its something else, like, quynh notices andy is obsessed with horses or smth and sends her a horse-themed prom invite. idk.

joe goes 2 andy & nile and he's like 'nicky doesnt want anything to do with me what do i do' and andy's like 'why doesnt he want to go?' and joe's like 'he THINKS i have ''''alternate motives'''' or something' and andy and joe exchange nervous eye contact over nile's head

andy & nile dismiss joe & go have a conversation with nicky akin to the one Older Sister and Younger Sister have about being who people tell you to be / overprotectiveness & refusing to let Younger Sister experience things for herself... which ends with nicky reluctantly agreeing to go to prom

anyways they all go to prom, nile decides (bc of the ^ convo) to ask out the Nice Nerd (who i guess...... is a senior/junior) rather than The Jerkface. Jerkface comes to prom tho, gets pissed & confronts nile, andy, nearby, hears the commotion and comes over with quynh, and bc of the commotion then, joe, who's like... getting some punch, away from nicky, comes over --

(UNKNOWING THAT NICKY COMES OVER LIKE 3 SECONDS AFTER HE DOES AND IS STANDING RIGHT BEHIND HIM)

-- and as the six of them are all arguing (nile, Nerd, andy, quynh, joe, Jerkface) (with nicky watching from like a foot away) Jerkface mentions that nile is paying quynh to date andy

quynh & nile r like 😬 & andy is like 'YOU WERE PAYING HER?? ??? ?HOW COULD U DO THIS AND NOT TELL ME ? ?' and joes like 'hrnnnn. .. thats a little hypocritical dont u think. considering you paid me to date nicky' and nile's like :0 and quynh is like :0 and nicky (right behind joe) is like 'WHAT'

and nile's like '????YOU PAID JOE TO DATE NICKY??" and andy's like 'DONT CHANGE THE SUBJECT YOU PAID QUYNH TO DATE ME???' and nicky's like 'WHAT (x2)'

and nile's like 'JOE YOU WERE TAKING MONEY TO DATE NICKY? I THOUGHT YOU ACTUALLY LIKED HIM YOU ASKED ME FOR DATING ADVICE???' and andy's like 'QUYNH YOU ACCEPTED MONEY TO DATE ME I THOUGHT WE REALLY HAD SOMETHING HERE' and nicky's like 'WHAT (x3)'

and so on and so forth. and it ends with the group Scattering to deal with their respective angst separately, probably right after Jerkface gets his lights punched out

and then..... hh..... i guess nicky would be the one to write the poem in the end. maybe andy writes one too. and then andy and joe both hunt their respective dates down and assert it Wasnt About The Money. and then andy and quynh make plans to go to the same college together. and then everyone lives happily ever after