#also the old guard | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

regina-del-cielo · 7 months

Text

Maybe it's a 'study finds water is wet' type of thought, but

considering it's an action movie whose overall plot is "immortal warriors Fuck Shit Up™️", I think it's significant that in The Old Guard the thing that makes Copley pull red strings through his Murder Conspiracy Board and say "[Merrick] doesn't care what [Andy]'s done with [her immortality]" is the people they save, not the ones they kill

Most of the Conspiracy Board is him circling random newspaper headlines and faces on old photographs to (more or less realistically) follow the immortals' treck through the world and big historical events. Which is, in-canon, not much different than putting portraits from different centuries next to a picture of Keanu Reeves and saying "they look the same, clearly Reeves is an immortal!"

But then there are the connections. A little girl holding Joe's hand in WW1 becoming the youngest (and first) woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize for Medicine (suck it, Kozak). Or the grandchild of a family that Andy saved from [something] helping people escape from the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia.

They are warriors. They have fought and been in the midst of countless wars, major or minor, throughout history. They must have killed as many people as they saved... and yet.

It's not them taking out a random warlord or dictator or rabidly hateful politician that has tangible repercussions in history. It's the children and families they get out of war zones, save from accidents, protect from natural disasters. People to whom they give a second chance at life, and grow to change the world (or even just their own world), like a mysterious stranger once changed theirs just by holding out a hand or patching a wound.

I don't know I just think it's particularly neat

#my ponderings #the old guard #I know we all love to play the 'if you could go back in time and kill One Person who would it be' game #but I think a movie that makes it EXTREMELY SATISFYING to see the Bad Guys die -#- having 'actually the best and greatest changes happen when people help each other' as its underlying message...#it means something #I also think it connects to Andy feeling like nothing she does changes anything at the start of the movie #for 80% of her life you could Solve A Problem by Taking Out The Guy Causing The Problem #especially in battle! you kill the general and you win. if you win the Problem Is Solved #but then everything becomes More Complex. the Problems™️ are globalized and/or systemic.#and Winning a Battle means just killing people. it doesn't Stop The Problem (nor really end a war)#so it feels useless #and even when they save people... they can’t stay in people's lives for long because immortality #which means they can never know what happens to the people they save #they don't (and can't) have the full picture

911 notes · View notes

elfcollector · 1 month

Text

I feel ill. All the fools and villains who ever fell for my ploys, they're — they're here!

#gamingnetwork #vgedit #videogameedit #gamingedit #dailygaming #gameplaydaily #bg3edit #bg3 #bgedit #bg3 astarion #astarion #astarion ancunin #:(#i think this scene is so interesting and speaks to why i get so annoyed by the 'any portrayal of astarion #as having an degree of a conscience or goodness in him is stupid and woobifying. hes chaotic evil and thats IT' thing #the grief and guilt. the way he tries to talk himself into it. the way he removes HIS OWN autonomy to do it. pretends theres no other choic #esp in the context of other moments where he preens when hes called good. he LIKES being smth other than what cazador made him #but hes so SCARED. he spends this dialogue talking himself into killing them and he HAS to talk himself into it BECAUSE this kind of evil #isnt easy to him despite it all. theres still scraps of a conscience there yknow? and he hides it from himself by pretending hes less free #astarion is fun BECAUSE hes weird and contradictory and a bad person with the capacity 4 good. BECAUSE he doesnt know what he actually want #also i love the idea of him in this moment rly thinking abt the player....like whether theyre friends or romances #a player whos been really kind and loving to him...kept him safe....trusted him....#thinking about how they let their guard down for him and how in his old life THIS would have been the life #hed been damning them to....years and centuries in a tiny cage somehow even worse than his

277 notes · View notes

muffinlance · 7 days

Text

Read "Suki, Alone". Liked it in general. But can they please, please hire someone who knows both the show's actual events and how to follow through on a character arc? Because guys. Guys. That comic is not implying about Suki what they meant it to be implying, and all because of literally one line.

So like. From a writer's standpoint:

What they meant to do: show Suki as a community-oriented person who cares for her people, and believes in everyone succeeding together.

As opposed to (spoilers): the thief girl they set her up in contrast with, who's pretty upfront and consistent on primarily looking out for herself. She betrays Suki for one (1) corn chip to improve her own life at the prison, no surprise.

But the problem is: they give Suki an inspirational line to the effect of "we're all working together and we'll all break out together"

You know

The thing she does not do in the show

So if both the show and this comic are canon, then instead of setting up a compare/contrast with the thief girl, they've just set up a comparison. One were Suki is arguably worse, because she's been leading a significant number of prisoners on with her "we'll all fight and win our freedom together!" business, only to straight up cut them out of the escape loop and abandon them, whereas the thief is only leading Suki on in the sense that Suki keeps telling her what it's morally correct to think and confuses snide replies with agreement

My dudes. My fellow writers. You people actually being paid for this. There were so many ways to fix those awful implications against our girl's character, the simplest of which would be to not include that line. Or they could have, you know, made it canon compliant with what actually happens in the show, so that this comic doesn't set Suki up as a betrayer instead of a community builder. Like... just send all her good prison buddies off to other prisons in the wake of the warden finding out they're colluding. Have it timed to be right before the next new prisoners arrive, thus setting it immediately before the Boiling Rock episodes, so Suki didn't have anyone left in the prison she'd want to take with her on a breakout. For bonus points, include a page or two of her and her Kyoshi warriors opening up the cell of one of her prison friends post-war, thus implying she's tracking down and actually fulfilling her promises. Maybe even show her doing the same with thief girl, who was established as being imprisoned on false charges anyway, and also showing that Suki is A) the bigger person, and B) willing to acknowledge her own role in mistakes (because I cannot emphasize enough how much thief girl was not hiding her own priorities, and it was Suki who approached HER with all this, not the girl ever doing anything special to weasel her way in) (this would also open up an opportunity for paralleling Suki's earlier in-comic mistake of not listening to one of her friend's very valid thoughts and feeling, which lead to the girl leaving their island alone pre-canon; a "seeing people as they are, not what you want them to be" moment)

Anyway yeah enjoyable enough for a quick read but another one for the "this can't be canon or the characters are So Much Worse than they were in the actual show" pile

At least Aang didn't promise to murder anyone in this one

#I also have minor critiques like #Why are all the guards drawn as short and noodly-armed as Sokka pretending to be a guard #Why are the guards the only ones allowed to have funny lines #Did anyone consider using a lack of dialogue in some panels to establish mood and let the visuals speak for themselves (no they did not)#Why is Azula villain monologuing for so long at the start #She does like her villain lines but in the show they're short #And generally aimed at fresh opponents #Not last week's old news #I kept wondering why Azula was even there instead of generic lackeys especially since she had to have been dealing with the conquest of #Ba Sing Se around then. big This Could Have Been An Email vibes #Also as a gardener #HOW FAST WERE THOSE PRISON PLANTS GOING TO SEED AND WHERE CAN I GET SOME #Apparently they needed minimal (almost no?) light and tiny cracks of space and were nutritious and tasted good raw and grew so fast they #Could substantially affect the diets of multiple prisoners within a short time span?#I WANT THEM IN MY INDOOR SETUP ASAP #Screw lettuce I want Suki's Magic Beans #avatar the last airbender #atla #Suki #There continue to be no comics in Ba Sing Se but this was a better attempt than some #Suki Alone

248 notes · View notes

chickenoptyrx · 2 months

Text

Skrunkly nugget Raditz.

#lol i literally drew 1 PANEL of nanny nappa and kid raditz and vegeta #for a gd comm!!#and suddenly i wanna draw this now :///#if i do draw em these kids are gettin bangs #only 1 with a dramatically receding hairline gonna be nappa #i shooouuulllddd probably also use the wrist guard bracer things from the bardock special :/#that dont extent to cover the hand or have the thumb loop or rope lookin bit #...or imma take some liberties cause i like those things >:T #aayy but i can atleast draw the old style scouters on em when their pre - immediately post planet explosion >:]#i love the big stupid button on bardocks scouter and even vegeta was still using that style at that time so the new once mustv not been out #p sure even freeza was

327 notes · View notes

scimitar-and-longsword · 2 months

Text

The Old Guard (2020)

Character Posters, via @Skydance on Instagram, June 15th - 24th 2020

TOG Promo Material (Part 2/?)

#the old guard #andromache the scythian #nile freeman #sebastian le livre #yusuf al kaysani #nicolo di genova #tog promo material #i know this has all been posted before in various capacities #i just kind of want to archive it all in one place #*shrug*#ok also though #BOOKER IS THE ONLY ON THE LEFT SIDE OF HIS PICTURE!!!#and i think that is a fun but subtle choice for the marketing team to have made for the character #lamp shade his betral a tad #love it

189 notes · View notes

puppetmaster13u · 4 months

Text

Prompt 166

So Danny is going to blame this on Vlad. Everything was going great, his parents had accepted him, Ellie is home for a while as was Jazz, Vlad was going to ghost-therapy along with Jordan to both get over apparently very bad obsession-sickness, and it was finally summer break! Which meant camping, and no ghost stuff for the first time in forever.

He should have known everything was going too well, because that’s just the Fenton luck isn’t it? So he was going to blame this entire thing on Vlad, even if it might maybe be his own fault just a little bit. But how was he supposed to know the glowing rock formation that looked sort of like a portal was actually going to do something?!

Urgh, he’s not going to deal with dimension travel, he already has to deal with time bullshit thanks to his peepaw! At least they’re all in this together and haven’t gotten separated? Ugh. This is going to be annoying.

#dcxdp #dpxdc #dp x marvel #danny phantom crossover #prompts #They definitely get mistaken for some sort of elves fae or other supernatural creatures #The entire family is either halfas or liminal as hell #Very uncanny valley feeling #They’re also camping out over an old site of some sort #Behold! Thanks to Fenton Technology & Vladco Ghost Tech: Invisible tents & supplies!#Jordan is going overprotective guard dog mode on everyone #Ellie wants to go into the nearby (insert city here) to explore #Danny honestly just wants a burger & is preventing the hotdogs from escaping #Family bonding via trying to get back to their own dimension by summer end

255 notes · View notes

alcubierre-warpin · 1 year

Photo

needed to share the photos i’ve been digging up, slay off the charts

#succession #sorry im manic posting the last half week i'll shut up now #im falling hard #i need to give old guard appreciation and i will soon #i guess ill tag it #young guard #lol #frank being a sleeper hit #also david rasche looking back is so dad coded fuck

716 notes · View notes

youssefguedira · 16 days

Text

i dont know when ill get around to writing the larger fic this is part of but you know brain worms have this

Nicky offers to pick him up at the airport like it’s nothing, like it hasn’t been almost ten years since they saw each other, because he knows Joe hates planes and won’t want to try and navigate the two trains and two buses it’ll take to actually reach their hometown after the flight. And Joe doesn’t even try to protest, just texts him Thank you before he gets on the plane and then tries not to think about it for the entire flight. He fails.

When he arrives he’s exhausted, because it never really gets easier no matter how many times he does it. Moves through the airport like a zombie, operating mostly on muscle memory. He hasn’t been here in a long time. Still knows it well enough to navigate without really thinking about it.

His suitcase is one of the last to come through on the carousel, but it does come through, and then he’s walking to arrivals with his heart in his throat.

Nicky’s hanging back from the crowd, hands in his pockets. His hair is a little longer now, and at some point in the last decade he’s gotten his ears pierced, which Joe didn’t know. He’s wearing a dark green sweater and blue jeans. When he catches sight of Joe he smiles, small and restrained, straightens slightly.

“Hey,” he says as Joe gets closer, voice soft.

Joe has to swallow. “Hey,” he says hoarsely.

And he doesn’t even need to say anything else, because Nicky pulls him into a hug before Joe even has to ask, and Joe buries his face in Nicky’s neck and tries to breathe around the sob catching in his throat. One of Nicky’s hands comes up to cup the back of Joe’s neck, his thumb moving back and forth gently, and Joe is fragile enough that that gesture alone almost undoes him.

Nicky pulls back first. Smiles at Joe. “You look good,” he says.

Joe has to swallow before he trusts himself to speak. “You too.”

They linger just a moment longer, Nicky’s hand still on the back of Joe’s neck. Ten years ago, Joe would’ve kissed him; now there’s a gap neither of them quite know how to fill.

Finally, Nicky steps back fully, and Joe feels the loss of contact sharply. “We should go,” Nicky says. Joe nods, and follows him out of the terminal.

The car Nicky heads for is the same battered old thing he’s been driving since he got his licence. Joe wonders to himself how the car is even still going, and the look Nicky gives him tells him he knows exactly what Joe’s thinking.

It does something funny to Joe’s heart. He looks away, and gets in the car.

“I brought you something to eat,” Nicky says before he starts the car, reaching for the bag by Joe’s feet.

“You didn’t have to–” Joe begins, but Nicky cuts him off with a knowing almost-smile.

“You hate plane food,” Nicky says, “and it’s almost two, and the other option would be whatever we can find on the way. I thought you might prefer this to service station food.”

It makes Joe want to cry a little. “Nicky,” he says, and can’t manage anything else.

Nicky seems to understand. He pulls out what he had been looking for - a silver thermos, and a fork - and hands it to Joe. The contents are still warm when Joe opens it: pasta, warm and comforting.

“Good?” Nicky asks, watching him.

Joe nods. “Good.”

“Okay.” Nicky looks at him for a beat longer, then turns away and starts the car.

There’s a moment of delay before the CD player starts up, but when it does, Joe knows it from the opening note: he bought Nicky this CD from a thrift store the summer before he left for university, when they’d taken off for two weeks, just them and the car and the road. And there’s no chance that Nicky’s kept it in his car for ten years, but as they leave the airport and turn onto the motorway it makes it feel like they’ve done this a thousand times before, even though Nicky never picked him up from the airport when he came home, only met him at the station once or twice.

Joe finishes the pasta and tucks the thermos back in the bag. “Thank you,” he says, and it comes out a lot quieter than he means it to.

Nicky glances at him. “We’re still a few hours away, if you want to try and sleep. I will wake you when we’re almost there.”

Joe might protest under other circumstances, but the flight was long, and he doesn’t sleep well on planes anyway. So he takes off his scarf and folds it into a makeshift pillow before leaning back and closing his eyes. Nicky drums his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the beat, hums along with the tune, and Joe lets the sound of his voice and the tapping of the rain on the window wrap around him like a blanket, carrying him off to sleep.

----------

Joe wakes to Nicky shaking his shoulder gently. “We’ll be there soon,” he’s saying. The rain has stopped; the radio is on, now, chattering in the way in the background. They’ve left the motorway behind for a much narrower road. Joe has to blink a few times before he catches sight of a sign and realises what Nicky means.

He sits up. The position he’d been sleeping in hadn’t been great for his back or his neck, and he’ll probably regret it soon, but he’d slept a lot better than he might’ve expected.

Being back always makes the rest of his life feel like a dream, like he’d never left at all. When the sign for their town passes Joe sits up, panic coiling in his stomach. He’s had days to prepare himself and still isn’t ready.

“Wait,” he says when they turn a corner two streets away from Joe’s parents’ house, “Nicky. Wait.”

“What?” Nicky asks. He doesn’t stop, but he does slow down.

“I can’t– I can’t do this.”

Now Nicky does stop, pulling into a lay-by. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, I just. Not yet. I need time.”

Nicky looks at him for a long moment. “When are they expecting you?”

“I didn’t give an exact time. Just sometime this afternoon.” He’d told his sister Nicky was coming to get him over the phone; she hadn’t said anything, but the silence had been enough.

Nicky doesn’t say anything, but he’s got the look on his face that means he’s thinking.

“I’ll be okay by myself,” Joe says then. “If you need to work.”

Nicky shakes his head. “I have today off.” And then, before Joe can really think about that, he turns the car around and heads back the way they came. This time, he recognises the path Nicky’s taking almost immediately, turning away from the area Joe’s parents live in and towards the outskirts of town, where it starts to become mostly farmland.

“I can park the car by my uncle’s house,” Nicky says, glancing at Joe. “Then we can go from there.”

Joe doesn’t need to ask where; they’ve walked the same route so many times he could probably do it in his sleep.

The sheep are out in the fields by Nicky’s uncle’s house, but he doesn’t see any of the lambs yet, though they must be coming soon. Nicky’s uncle let Joe try and help with lambing once, up until the point where Joe saw what exactly that entailed, and immediately lost his nerve. But he’d still let him help Nicky feed them every year.

There’s a little paved yard outside the farmhouse, where Nicky parks the car before grabbing the bag that had been by Joe’s feet. “I’m going to drop these off,” Nicky says. “You can come in, if you want?”

Nicky’s aunt and uncle have always been kind to Joe, but they will inevitably ask about his father, and Joe cannot quite bring himself to talk about that, not yet.

“I’ll wait,” Joe says.

It’s a few minutes before Nicky reappears, this time without the bag, but carrying a different thermos. He smiles apologetically as he jogs over. “I didn’t mean to make you wait long,” Nicky says. “But you know how they are.”

All Joe can do is nod. Nicky sets off down the path towards the woods that border the farm and Joe falls into step beside him. They don’t talk much on the way there, but they don’t need to: the silence is comfortable enough.

It’ll be spring soon. It’s cold but not cold enough to be uncomfortable, and the snowdrops are in full bloom, bright shards of white in the grass. The rain has stopped, but the smell of it still hangs in the air. They must’ve spent hours walking this path, enough that Joe doesn’t really need to look to know exactly where Nicky’s going.

This part of the river is just secluded enough that he can’t hear cars passing by anymore. The bench by the path is still there, though at some point they’ve built a shelter over it, which probably leaks but has kept it dry even after the rain. Nicky makes for it immediately.

If he looked at the back of the third slat from the left he’d find their names carved into the wood, side by side. Joe very deliberately doesn’t look.

Nicky sits down. Nods to the space beside him. When Joe joins him, he holds out the thermos.

“Tea,” Nicky says. “If you want.”

How many times have they done exactly this, over the years? In summer, they’d wade into the river; in winter, Joe always wanted to try skating on it, but the ice was never quite thick enough. Every time Nicky got into a fight with his father, every time Joe couldn’t bear to be in the house one second longer, they’d come here.

Joe gives into memory and rests his head on Nicky’s shoulder. Nicky brings one arm up to hold him close, hand on Joe’s upper arm.

Joe closes his eyes, listens to the birds, listens to Nicky’s breathing.

Nicky says, “When is the funeral?”

“Thursday,” Joe says. He doesn’t want to think about this, doesn’t want to think about the last conversation he had with his father, doesn’t want to imagine walking into his parents’ house and finding him gone. Of all people, Nicky will understand. It’s what brought them together when they were younger: being the only two students in their class who spoke English as a second language, and difficult fathers.

Silence falls between them, and Nicky doesn’t let him go, and Joe’s missed him, more than he really knew. He’d tried to stay in touch, and they had, for the most part, but it’s not the same as having Nicky beside him again.

Joe doesn’t think there’s anyone in this world who knows him the way Nicky does.

He doesn’t know why he says it, but they haven’t talked about it, and it feels like something they should, if only so Joe can lay this all to rest.

Joe opens his eyes. “You, uh. You seeing anyone?”

Nicky doesn’t pull away, but Joe feels the way he goes still, tense. Slowly, softly, he says, “I don’t think this is the right time, Joe.”

“Is there ever a right time?” Joe asks, half-joking.

Nicky doesn’t laugh.

Joe clears his throat. “I’m not. So.”

Nicky exhales slowly, like he’s steadying himself. His thumb moves back and forth, back and forth where it’s resting on Joe’s arm, catching on the fabric of his coat. “Me neither.”

Joe’s not sure if that’s better or worse than if Nicky had said he’d found someone. If he had, perhaps Joe could put to rest the little part of him that will always be in love with Nicky. Not get rid of it entirely, but fold it away in a little corner of his heart and leave it there. This, though – this is possibility he doesn’t know what to do with.

“How long are you here?” Nicky asks quietly, moving his hand up to run his fingers through Joe’s hair, like he used to whenever Joe needed something to keep him grounded.

“I got two weeks off work,” Joe says. “After that I don’t know.”

Two weeks feels monumentally long and yet vanishingly short at the same time. And after?

They don’t talk about much after that. Small talk, more than anything else: Nicky’s still living in the same apartment, still working the same job, but Joe knows he loves it from the tone of his voice when he talks about the shelves he built for his most recent client, how he’s starting to make more of his own stuff, how his boss has been talking about retiring and leaving the whole business to Nicky. Joe could listen to him talk about it for hours. Maybe he does.

It settles the frantic thing that had woken in his chest when they crossed the town line, and eventually, Joe says, “I think I’m ready.”

Nicky turns his head inwards and kisses the top of Joe’s head. Lingers there for a moment. It isn’t anything; it doesn’t have to be anything.

“Okay,” Nicky says. “Okay.”

The walk back to the farm is largely silent, just as the walk there had been, passing the thermos of tea back and forth between them. They get back in the car, and Nicky drives them back to Joe’s parents’ house.

Nicky pulls up on the curb outside the house. “Call me, if you need anything. Or just– call me.”

“I will,” Joe promises. He has two weeks; he’s not going to waste them. They haven’t been in the same timezone in a long, long time.

Nicky smiles, small and hopeful, and there’s nothing really to say, after that.

Joe gets out of the car, and prepares to face his family.

#neon writes #the old guard #kaysanova #the setting and language of this one is deliberately deeply vague i don't know where it is the point is the Vibe #i call this one someone took le otto montagne 2022 a bit too personally! this is the first 'section' of this fic #there's a second part after a little time jump (not more than a year) which is what i like to call the past lives segment of this fic #anyway. enjoy #userlyde #userlinax #OH ALSO. the song is amore che vieni amore che vai #not for thematic reasons it's just the first track of ostinata e contraria #and its funny to me

97 notes · View notes