#it's a great ennemies to lovers between old men what is there not to love

[shapelytimber]

One of my goal in life is to make fanart of every fanfiction that has ever haunted me, and this time it's 'breathing water' by @thana-topsy

It's one of the very few fancfic I reread, I love it so much- The scene I drew is my second favorite scene in the story (I couldn't do justice to the n1 scene that makes me go insane ok sowwy),It's sad, it's badass, it's over the top I love it, but it's also near the end so oops spoilers

"'s alright [...] I just wish I could see the stars."

And my line and sketch as bonus :)

[flying-elliska]

Just watched The Old Guard yesterday....I have Emotions. Compelling characters, excellent rep, great action scenes. I see why tumblr is obsessed with it.

SPOILERS + lil essay incoming

It's not perfect obviously. It drags in places and I think it needed more flashbacks for the immortals that would have given that extra oomph (maybe they definitely couldn't afford that - the few historical flashbacks we got looked kinda cheap tbh). You feel like there is so much interesting stuff under the surface that isn't explored fully - how they got where they are because it does, at times, seem even more compelling than the present (which is already quite interesting, don’t get me wrong). The bad guy doesn't feel as scary as he should be, either - he lacks presence, he could have been more pathetic or more unhinged. The dialogue was a bit overly sparse in places. But overall, I loved it. Charlize Theron as queerish action queen badass with a gruff exterior but a core of goodness is like...my jam. And it NEEDS a sequel.

Some more thoughts :

- The tone of deep melancholy and sadness that pervades the film is so interesting. Yes, most of the main characters are the gruff action hero type who say little ; but there is so much underlying emotion there too, love and loyalty and loss, in the way they are played and interact with each other. So it doesn’t come over as the stereotypical macho cliché of ‘gotta repress those feelings and BE TOUGH’ - you really feel as if 1) those characters have spent so much time together that they function really well as a unit, they don’t need to talk a lot of the time, they just understand each other and 2) there is so much real grief and sorrow there that words wouldn’t properly adress it and it’s no use trying. AND at the same time, they still get an arc of ‘caring about the world is still good, actually.’ As an action movie fan who hates the ‘cardboard stoic is the only way to survive’ tropes of the genre, this movie just made me very happy. They have this intimacy within the group that feels so real and like...battle forged found families, again, my jam, but they’re also tied together by loss and loneliness and having no one else who understands. It’s so JUICY in terms of character dynamics. Nile’s more innocent but still a fighter thing fits very well with the older, more cynical ones. The ending, where they punish Booker with a century of loneliness for betraying them but ultimately still recognize why he did what he did and that he’s still part of the team...but that he might not ever see Andy again...my heart. 

- Also, it reminds me of this essay I read about how violence/battle/injury in film is often used an excuse to show male intimacy in a way that is not allowed anywhere else but in this movie, you both have platonic intimacy (and also between Andy and her team, which is cool! love a good m/f platonic soul bond!!!) AND you have a couple of dudes who both fight together and are actually lovers, which is awesome. The scene in the van is just so bloody brilliant because you have that idiot soldier who is at the level of homophobic taunts, ‘haha is he your boyfriend’ as if that was supposed to threaten their masculinity (because in their world it would). But Joe and Nicky are just way beyond those puerile games - they also met in this context of violence but because of their immortality, they were able to turn it into love. And it’s the thing that allowed them to survive the centuries with a relative level of happiness compared to the two others because they have each other. I love this because it 1) grounds gay love in history and clearly shows it as something that has always existed and can be an epic love able to withstand almost a thousand years (whereas gayness has been so often coded as something both modern and ephemeral) and 2) presents it as wiser, deeper and a lot more badass than the path of repression and violence as a baseline for men to interact even as a lot of male socialization is build up as brutal to avoid it so like YEAH !!!!! GOOD!!!!

- This is another movie that really REALLY shows the importance of having ppl who are not white and/or dudes behind the camera. (It was still written by one but I still feel a difference).The two leading ladies are never objectified, and their main emotional dynamic during the movie is with each other. The audience surrogate, who is also the emotional pivot of the movie who causes the other characters to change, is a young Black woman (especially since apparently Nile’s role and her relationship with Andy was expanded from the comics). Andy is the leader/main badass and mystery of the story in a way generally reserved for men. There is that scene, too, where Andy gets her wound patched up by a random woman in a pharmacy, which causes her to reflect on the good of humanity and the importance of good actions in a chaotic world. Chiwetel Eijofor’s villain being allowed complexity and a sort-of redemption. But it’s also more specific things in the way the movie is shot - especially in the non-Western countries. In action movie tropes, you have this cliché of ‘picturesque but dangerous’ ‘exotic’ locales, who are often used as the backdrop for action scenes, which is...not awesome tbh. This movie does take us to those countries, and there is action, but it’s also shot in a very humanizing way that reminds us that this is a real place where real people live : Nicky saying hello to the locals in South Sudan in their own language, Nile asking the Afghan women for help in the beginning, shots of kids playing with balloons, etc. The team accepts a mission in the beginning to rescue kidnapped Sudanese girls in the beginning - in most action movies often the populations to save are white/Western whereas locals/POC are shown as ‘tragic but acceptable collateral damage’. Or for instance, that scene in Marrakech’s Jemaa El-Fna square - a lot of the time foreign markets only appear as a ‘chaotic, dangerous’ backdrop for action to be ransacked through without a care ; here it’s just a cool lively place for the team to meet their contact, normalized instead of exotified. It’s shot the same way as the scenes in France, it’s interesting to look at and the shots take advantage of the beauty of the location but there are no weird color filters or shots that suggest that the place is bizarre, threatening, Otherized, etc. (Also interesting that most of the scenes in France take place in abandoned buildings like a church that’s half in ruins, a mine, etc...interesting reversal lmao.) The movie is not anti-imperialist by any means but it’s still...a tangibly different gaze, especially for an American movie, and it makes it a lot more humane and interesting.

- Overall, it left me wanting more, mostly in a good way. This could have made such an excellent series too. They seem to be setting Quynh as a villain for the next movie and that could be really interesting but I really hope they’re going for a ‘tragic villain gets redeemed in the end’ (with a side of lovers to ennemies to lovers with Andy...their story seems to have so much potential in such an epic tragic way) instead of ‘psycho lady too far gone to save’ thing. And that we get more flashbacks from the immortal’s pasts. Since it seems very successful, I hope we do get that sequel once the film industry starts again.