Another fic rec!!

Stalefish by Amiril

Fandom: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)

Additional Tags: Social Media, Team Bonding, Extreme Sports, Getting Together, joe and nicky are very ride-or-die for each other even when it's inconvenient, POV Nile Freeman, Nile Freeman centric, Team as Family

Summary: “Don’t look at it as a curse,” Joe had told her, a month earlier. “Think of it as an opportunity. What did you want to do that you were always too scared to try?”

This will be Markiplier’s cameo in the FNAF 2 movie

Thinking about Yusuf and Nicolò as young men again

The gays have three genres: Pirates, Cowboys, or Immortals

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

atp i genuinely doooon’t care if the old guard two is the worst thing put to film i just want to see the best character of all time (andromache the scythian) and her loser henchmen and everyone’s favorite girl nile freeman again

NIMONA (2023) | THE OLD GUARD (2020)

Today's flavor of insanity is brought to you by the fact that we only get ONE scene where Joe and Nicky are alone in a room. And it's in a fucking lab where they're being held hostage and Nicky was being tortured in it literally less than 5 minutes ago. And yet all it takes is for Joe to say ONE line (one fucking line. Hell, it's one word) and Nicky laughs unabashed for the ONLY time in the entire movie. He laughs unabashed and he even snorts and he looks more relaxed and open than at any other point, including the bet. Because it's just him and Joe and when it's just him and Joe he can allow himself to let every guard down, which he doesn't do even when he sleeps because he sleeps with a gun, but somehow, in the middle of the enemy's lair, after being tortured, Nicky can allow himself to relax enough to ugly laugh. Because it's just him and Joe and as long as it's just him and Joe he doesn't have to keep himself in check

immortal husbands + tropes → 2. offscreen moment of awesome

You're a child. An infant. Your mocking is thus infantile. He's not my boyfriend. This man is more to me than you can dream. He's the moon when I'm lost in darkness and warmth when I shiver in cold. And his kiss still thrills me, even after a millennia. His heart overflows with the kindness of which this world is not worth of. I love this man beyond measure and reason. He's not my boyfriend. He's all and he's more.

Joe (Marwan Kenzari) The Old Guard

You better hurry, Joe, or sex will have to wait much longer!

i keep saying that i'm not really an enemies to lovers fan because oftentimes, the enemies are not true enemies. however, enemies to lovers when done right is exquisite. nicky and joe, for example. actual enemies who killed each other a lot and found one thing binding them together, one single thing in common, which then reframed their perspective on everything. THAT'S enemies to lovers.

help i've been rotting over TOG once again and---

I think I-- I see a pattern--