#my_essays

[wickedpact]

dear tumblr user crim wickedpact pls write the essay/dissertation about nicky being shakespeare's fair youth (if you have time, ofc!!)

Not To Imply Nicky Was Shakespeare’s Fair Youth But Ive Read The Fair Youth Sonnets & Nicky Was Definitely Shakespeare’s Fair Youth, an essay by me, tumblr user crim wickedpact

background knowledge: our man shakespeare wrote some 120 sonnets about a young man referred to as the Fair Youth during the mid 1590s; there has been some debate among shakespeare enthusiasts whether shakespeare’s interest in the Fair Youth was platonic or romantic (but like. they were definitely romantic). no one knows for sure who the Fair Youth was, but it was definitely nicky and my first and most important piece of evidence regarding this hypothesis is the ‘lmao babe do you remember that guy who had a crush on me?’/ ‘i try not to remember the guy who had a crush on you’ look joe and nicky exchange when Merrick brings up shakespeare during the movie. especially since gina confirmed in a tweet that joe and nicky canonly did know shakespeare

my second piece of evidence is that it just Works (except for a couple small facts like.. the Fair Youth was prolly closer to his 20s than his 30s. and the fact that shakespeare implies that the Fair Youth slept with his mistress at one point. but he doesnt know what hes talking about shhh we IGNORE)

long post under cut

A. The Description Matches

when describing the Fair Youth (who I’ll call the FY from now on), shakespeare says he has a ‘gold complexion’ and ‘beautiful eyes’ and compares him to a ‘summer’s day’. He says the FY has “A woman’s gentle heart" and “An eye more bright than [women’s are], (...) Gilding the object whereupon [they] gazeth”

As much as shakespeare’s perceptions of sexuality and gender are very........  late 1500′s (whoo boy sonnet #20 is a wild ride) ...... the description does match, and also:

  B. The Fair Youth Refused to Get Married

it’s never really said why one way or another (shakespeare assumes it’s because the FY is selfish) but the FY didn’t/wouldn’t take on a wife and have a kid, and this was something that was a real sticker for our man Willy S. because, as he says in his sonnets a million times: beauty doesn’t last forever, but having a child not only passes down the FY’s beauty, but also blesses the woman the FY would have a child with (im not saying shakespeare wanted to bear the FY’s children, but he definitely did)

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose uneared womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

(ie. If you don’t renew yourself/ have children, you deprive the world and deprive a woman from having your child, since what woman out there is so beautiful that she wouldn’t want to bear your child?)

Like.

1.) if nicky is the FY then so many of these poems center around the idea of nicky growing old sometime soon and that must have been pretty funny to Nicky and

2.)  the fact that shakespeare would have been So Desperate for nicky to find a wife must have been the opposite of funny to joe. considering the ease of his and nicky’s relationship and the fact that being gay in late 1500s england was probably not a walk in the park, it is very likely shakespeare wouldn’t have known they were in a committed relationship-- or at least not known how close they actually were. Thus:

  C. The Rival (aka. Joe)

shakespeare mentions having a poetic rival in regards to the FY in several sonnets. In sonnet #21 he talks about how he’s not like Those Other Writers who use grand metaphors to talk about their muses

So is it not with me as with that Muse, Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse, Who heaven itself for ornament doth use And every fair with his fair doth rehearse, Making a couplement of proud compare With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems, With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare,

(ie. I’m not like other poets who, when inspired by a ‘painted beauty’ use heaven and every other beautiful thing on the planet to make a grand comparison to their muse: he specifically lists the sun and moon as examples as well as other beautiful things)

He then goes on to say

And then believe me, my love is as fair As any mother's child, though not so bright As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:

(ie. my love [the FY] is as beautiful as any other beautiful person, though I wouldn’t compare them to the stars/heavens (which is what he means by the 'gold candles’. those are stars.))

So shakespeare insults poets who compare their subjects to the sun, moon, and stars (amongst other things) and in the comics, Joe does literally exactly that

That man is the stars in my sky, and the sun that lights my days. That man is the moon when I'm lost in darkness, and warmth when I shiver in cold.

shakespeare also goes on to say in the same sonnet “Let them say more that like of hearsay well / I will not praise that purpose not to sell” which is to say ‘let people who like that kind of language use it, I wont because I don’t want anyone else to have the subject of my affections (the FY)’.

(which is a bit of a contradiction regarding his feelings abt the FY getting married, but these sonnets are full of contradictions. shakespeare was a confused dude; man spent the first 100 or so sonnets convinced the FY loved him back only for him to start wondering if the FY ever loved him near the end)

(not to mention Marriage For Love wasnt really.. much of a thing in Ye Olden Times but thats a different conversation. so shakespeare prolly didnt associate marriage with love/competition? anyways)

Shakesy-boo goes on to complain about this rival several times. In #79, he says

Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent He robs thee of, and pays it thee again. He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word From thy behaviour; beauty doth he give, And found it in thy cheek: he can afford No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.

(ie. everything ‘your poet’ (as the FY apparently favored this unnamed rival) says about you, he takes it from you in the first place. he talks about your virtue, but learned the word from watching your behavior. he calls you beautiful but only discovered beauty by looking at your face. every compliment he gives you he took from you in the first place)

[and, as a smaller example, he also bemoans the fact that people want to paint the FY in #67, saying, “Why should false painting imitate his cheek, / And steal dead seeming of his living hue?”. and yknow. Joe’s an artist.]

And then another example in #86

Was it the proud full sail of [the rival’s] great verse, Bound for the prize of all too precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?

Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?

(ie. he’s talking about how he’s having difficulty writing abt the FY and is rhetorically asking if ‘the proud sail’ of the rival’s verses was the reason his ‘ripe thoughts’ were killed in their ‘womb’. He then asks (again rhetorically) if it was the rival’s ‘spirit’ (or creativity, maybe) ‘’’‘by spirits taught to write’’’’ that killed his own drive to write. none of the analyses I’ve read really explain what shakespeare means by ‘spirits taught to write’, other than maybe being a joke or reference to something we dont know, but... ‘taught by dead people to write in a way mortal people can’t’ very much sounds like a description of an immortal poet, eh?)

Which brings me to,

  D. Willy Boy Thinks There Are 500 Year Old Writings About the Fair Youth

shakespeare talks about people having written about the FY ‘500 years ago’ from the late 1500s in #59 which......................... would have been around 1100 AD. :thinking face:

Oh that record could with a backward look, Even of five hundred courses of the sun, Show me your image in some antique book, Since mind at first in character was done, That I might see what the old world could say To this composed wonder of your frame;

(ie. Oh if I could look back 500 years and see how you were described in some old books so I could see/reference what people used to write about you)

Which again brings me to,

  E. I’m Not Saying shakespeare Stole From Joe, But:

1.) In #22, shakespeare says this,

For all that beauty that doth cover thee, Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me: 

(ie, your beauty is due to the ‘clothes’ my heart gives you-- probably means something like ‘you’re beautiful because i love you’. goes on to say his heart lives in the FY’s chest, and the FY’s heart lives in shakespeare’s chest)

so: shakespeare tells the FY he has shakespeare’s heart. in comparison, Joe calls nicky ‘my heart’ in the comics...... :thinking face x2:

2.) In #109, shakespeare tells the FY ‘thou art my all’,

For nothing this wide universe I call, Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

which rings similar to Joe’s ‘he’s all and he’s more’ as well as (from the comics) ‘he is my everything’

and just saying. joe looks pretty #done the mention of shakespeare.

  F. The last One

Despite shakespeare writing 30+ poems about the FY eventually growing old, the very last poem he writes about/for the FY says,

O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle hour; Who hast by waning grown, and therein showest Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self growest. 

(ie. you [the FY] have power over the ‘mirror’ (fickle glass) of time as well as time’s ‘harvesting’ ability (sickle hour) and as you grow older, you remain beautiful while your lovers [shakespeare] wither and grow old)

The transition from ‘get married and have a baby before you get old!!!!’ in #1-20 to talking about the FY’s presence in 500 y/o books in #59 to admitting the FY isn’t growing old in #126 kinda seems to imply shakespeare learning of/about nicky’s immortality at some point, and this last poem is him accepting it.

TLDR: not only does it make perfect sense if nicky was the Fair Youth from the FY sonnets, but it also makes perfect sense if joe was the Rival from the FY sonnets. its canon nothing will convince me otherwise

#IS THIS GETTING TAGGED? YES #nicolo di genova #joe x nicky #my_essays #the fair youth saga

[wickedpact]

[waggles finger angrily in direction of computer screen] KEANE!

ok so i Started saying this in that other post but the Thing About keane is that he doesnt come off as being That Bad through the most of the movie. obviously hes not a good person; the fact that he works for merrick and that hes ex special forces alone is sus as fuck (like buddy, why arent you still in special forces?)

but in comparison to dr kozak (sadist) and merrick (also a sadist) keane doesnt seem that bad. he spends most of the movie standing around in douchebag suits and being intimidating. there are only like five scenes where we see him touch other people, ‘cause all he really does is order his goons around, and Usually when we Do see him touch people, he’s more or less Your Usual Brand of Asshole about it

long post under cut :/

like. 1.) grabbing joe after he headbutts merrick

2.) knocking out andy and booker with the sedative

3.) knocking out copley

4.) the joenicky fight scene

5.) the joe fight scene afterwards but that doesnt really count bc he never got a punch in (lol)

and in all of those, excluding the the joenicky fight scene (and the joe fight scene which i just said doesnt count) keane’s.... eh? hes not nice but he could be way meaner.

The Joe Grab: obviously not Good Boy behavior, obviously aggressive, but he doesnt hurt joe here. hes not even cutting off joe’s air, he’s just grabbing him.

i mean. in reaction to the headbutt, keane threatens joe without harming him, the goon behind joe pistol whips him, and merrick stabs him. of the three reactions we get, keane’s is the most mild. look, his finger isnt even on the trigger

andy & book; again not good boy behavior, but again he could have been way worse. when he sedates andy she struggles like fuck, and you can even see keane kind of stumble as he tries to hold her down. even so, he doesnt hit her to get her to stop, a thing his goons do fairly regularly to the others, and even when he grips her neck to hold her still, he’s holding her jaw more than her neck (look at his thumb). in the aftermath, she doesnt even have any marks. (this coming from the movie that gave merrick a red spot on his forehead for like a whole minute after joe headbutted him. lmao suck it merrick)

and when he goes for book, more of the same. he just kind of... holds him in place, despite his struggling. its professional . hes just a dude doing his job. Keane The Professional.

when he knocks out copley right after thats the only other time we see him personally harm someone, and even then that was with a specific order from merrick (you see him give keane A Look) and theres nothing sadistic there either. he hit copley, copley was out(TM), the end.

None Of This Gives Any Indication Of Keane Enjoying Causing Pain

AMND THEN: THE JOENICKY FIGHT

and Many People have discussed this fight so i wont go off too hard but. this fight. it lasts roughly thirty seconds. Thirty. and of those thirty seconds, keane spends about... eh, seventeen focused on nicky? (the kicking, the gun, etc) on joe? he spends about three. as in seconds. the other ten seconds is mostly keane getting beat on or standing ominously above the two of them.

and of the few analyses ive seen, people point out keane being homophobic as his motivation here (and he definitely is) but homophobia alone doesnt explain why keane WENT OFF on nicky specifically.

because like! the beginning of this fight! keane sends all of his goons after nile booker and andy! SIX men to fight THREE immortals, leaving KEANE ALONE to fight the other two! and then he walks into the room joe and nicky are in, sees them both lying there,

ADN HE PUTS AWAY HIS GUN

like! he already won the fight right then and there! nicky and joe were on the floor! a bullet to the head to both of them to keep them down and keane would have had them both, but no, keane puts his gun away, grabs his zipties,

AMDN then he goes straight for fucnening nicky

it would make Sense if hed gone for joe. he and joe have established beef. the headbutt. the speech in the van (which im sure keane heard at some point since those guards had bodycams and im sure keane wanted to know how he and nicky managed to kill his men and looked at the footage) --and theres the killing of the men itself, but both joe and nicky did that together. so.

either way, joe has been challenging the authority of keane and his men since he had the breath to do so. nicky’s barely glanced in keane’s direction (beyond the killing the men thing, which weve established both he and joe did)

other than that, worst thing nicky’s done to keane is nearly bump into him while he was busy making Disappointed Eye Contact with copley

but anyways: keane doesnt go for joe! he walks past joe’s body and goes for nicky, who’s just barely begun to move. it would also make sense, at this point, to put a bullet in nicky’s head here. like i said, keane’s already won. Keane The Professional wouldve already killed him.

instead, keane kicks nicky in the head, stands there and watches nicky get up, then kicks him a second time, and watches him again. he goes to do it a third time before nicky gets the drop on him.

at no point prior to this in the movie do we see keane behave like this. he doesnt cause pain for the sake of causing it. he doesnt hurt people pointlessly. here, he does. theres no reason to be kicking nicky like this. its not accomplishing anything, it’s not helping him capture them. hes just doing it ‘cause he wants to. (not to mention, each time you see him go to kick nicky, he goes to kick harder)

and actually, doing this is actively stupid! joe is waking up a foot away. there are three other immortals on the loose. merrick is unaccounted for. and keane is just wasting time. by dicking around rn, he’s actively shooting himself in the foot.

but anyways, nicky punches keane, keane kicks him off, and then joe’s awake, and This is the detail i just noticed a little earlier-- but when keane gets up here and joe grabs him: his head is turned towards nicky. his eyes are turned towards nicky. he’s moving towards nicky, not joe, who is the active threat in the moment

he doesnt even acknowledge joe until joe’s hand is physically on his head. joe had to physically Hold the dude back from going after nicky again

and then we see keane’s behavior change again when he sets his sights on joe. Keane The Professional is back again- two rapid-fire punches aimed at joe, no nonsense, no drawing it out, and then he goes for his gun

he doesnt draw it out. he doesnt sit and watch joe suffer. that gif is in real time, thats how fast keane took joe out. two punches, shoulder, neck, and then an immediate escalation to lethal force.

like the difference between: keane putting his gun away and then keeping it away for fifteenish seconds while focusing on nicky

vs

when focusing on joe, it takes him.. about two seconds & some change to pull the gun out again

keane wanted joe dead, but he wanted nicky to fucking suffer

and the you know, theres the obvious gun in mouth thing, which other people have talked about. the only thing i have to say about That is that its another fucking example of keane shooting himself in the foot. hes in a room filled with gas w/ no gas mask, and theres a very pissed off joe like two feet away from him recovering by the second. however, he doesnt do the Keane The Professional thing and put a bullet in nicky’s forehead-- he deliberately leans down, grabs nicky’s hair (and its not like he needed to, nicky sure as hell wasnt going anywhere anyway, unable to breathe and probably still sitting on a concussion after being kicked in the head) and jams the gun in nickys mouth. he’s wasting time doing that. it would have been faster and easier to just shoot nicky in the head. (like he probably was about to do to joe, considering how he doesnt step any closer to joe as he pulls out the gun)

and then he just??? bounces??

he is, again, in a position where he’d practically won. he had nicky dead. joe was on the ground. he could have gone for his mask, or shot joe and then fucked off to get a breath of Good Air. gun is still in his hand. he doesnt even try to take out joe, not even just shooting over his shoulder as he left. he doesnt give a shit about joe once nicky’s dead.

nicky was dead, so keane just left. and he double takes at the body as he goes??

like at first i thought he was confused nicky wasnt getting up, but he knows how the immortals work, he saw joe and nicky die on the body cams at the church. like sir why are fucking looking? fuck off?

but yeah theres just no explanation for this! nicky has done practically nothing to keane, but keane just zeroed tf in on nicky with no provocation! it couldnt have been just homophobia, if it were he would have targeted joe the same way he did nicky. he had to have some other motivation for acting completely differently @ nicky than he does to any other character in the film, and then just. going back to normal once nicky was dead. its weird. its creepy. and theres like 0 explanation. dont like it

#i said i was gonna make this post and then i sat down and made ramen instead which really sums up me as a person #its fucikgn. keane meta hours i guess #dont know what to tag this as other than #Keane Warning #my_essays

[wickedpact]

i would like to hear ur essay if ur willing to share it 👀 - 2 thoughts anon

Hokay so. the thing about joe and anger is every time we see joe get angry, or say hes angry, or lash out at someone (ie. signs of anger) we are Very Pointedly shown him afraid first, and usually the Thing Hes Angry At is The Thing That Made Him Scared/Caused The Fear

which, like i said in my tags, makes sense. anger is a secondary emotion. people are never angry ‘just because’ there is always an underlying reason for anger whether fear, insecurity, exhaustion, etc etc

so, essentially: for joe, anger is always a response to fear (long post w pictures under cut)

but anyways the first time in the movie we see joe show anything close to anger is at the end of the kill floor fight. andy asks for check ins and joe spits out a bullet and says he’s ‘very pissed off’ (which always makes me laugh cause you know. his soft little voice. anyways)

prior to this fight, what do you see? this little face

and i think it was.. really Deliberately done that when nicky died, he fell on his side facing joe, but joe died facing completely the other way, so the audience sees him slowly turn his head a whole 180 degrees. its like a 2 or 3 second shot, gives you a long second to absorb the fear -> relief on joe’s face. nicky meanwhile, when we cut to him, is already in ‘lets get these bitches’ mode. whether he had that same fear moment as joe did or not (he prolly did), the movie doesnt care enough to show us. however, the movie does show and does want you to know, hey, Joe Was Scared Here.

which, you know, this also moment functions as a little tease/foreshadowing/whatever of their relationship, for those who dont know about it going in. and its like a completely separate topic about how i love that they did that, slowly give the audience bigger and bigger hints that ‘hey, there’s Something Going On between those two’ until it becomes explicitly obvious theyre a couple

Anyways. movie deliberately shows joe being scared out of his mind when he looks to nicky, and then a few minutes later, joe’s pissed. he says as much.

(plus, not really the point of the meta, but he also got killed here, so it wasnt like he was having a good time in the first place)

but anyways thats the first example

the next time we see joe angry, he’s lashing out at the van guards. which. its not like they exactly earned joe’s respect there. (or mine) but again, we see the same pattern. joe’s angry. why is joe angry? hes scared.

i dont even need two screenshots this time bc in this example the fear event is happening at the same time as the anger

i love this line bc the words themselves come off as pretty... you know, challenging & he sounds pretty pissed when he says them. but, again, look at his little face, his brows are up, he’s near tears. it always gets me how, in this scene, joe panics so fast when nicky doesnt wake up.

honestly its never even specified whether nicky was dead or unconscious on the van (none of his bullet wounds are lethal, it depends on what kind of gas they used) and yet when he doesnt wake up, joe just immediately panics. he struggles against the guards pulling him back, his voice starts cracking, it raises in pitch, he gets near tears, and it takes.. like, seconds for him to get like that. ten seconds at the absolute most, probably less. he sounds like hes close to a panic attack to me. just utterly terrified. so: he snaps at the guards.

but only once. once nicky is awake, that all just goes. the next time the guard yells at him joe is just... super calm, super composed, mr. ‘I Need To Know He’s Okay.’ The fear was gone, so the anger was pretty much also gone. even when he’s delivering ‘youre a child’ later on, he doesnt sound that angry, just like.. disappointed and mildly annoyed, i guess.

and then, next time you see him pissed is the headbutt scene and idk if i even need to explain that one much. he and nicky were kidnapped, nicky gave joe a big fuckin scare, there were homophobes, obviously joe’s having a bad time, and merrick’s the source of all that

so again he lashes out and Oh Boy Does That End Badly For Him

and im gonna skip over booker and go to keane real quick-- ive obviously spoken All The Words In The English Language about every scene that keane breathes in, but You’ll Hear Me Say Them Again!!

when joe fights keane, (like ive pointed out) he kicks keane’s gun out of his hands and drops his own. like, joe very specifically wanted to kill this dude with his bare hands, in a manner that resembled how keane killed nicky (as joe is a very passionate enforcer of the golden rule here & i lov him for it)

& like ive Also Pointed Out, in the bts footage, when keane pulls the gun he killed nicky with on joe, joe just fucking wallops him for it

like joe was just not having anything keane was selling, and as much as its important to point out that joe-- you know, its not like he’s flown into a rage here, the movie pretty deliberately shows him looking pretty horrified With Life right after he kills keane. but joe is pissed here, and he does draw out keane’s death pointedly and purposefully [good for him dot png]

........and again, what do we see before this? the image of my heart breaking in two for joe

again, joe being angry is precluded by him being afraid-- notably and specifically, afraid of nicky dying. and you know... when you make movies, its always very purposeful what’s shown and what isn’t, because theyre such relatively short forms of entertainment. a novel can take days to read and absorb; a movie doesnt have that kind of time. And Yet, tOG makes a specific point to show joe scared out of his wits after nicky dying on three(3) separate occasions, and lingers with him, sometimes for whole minutes, showing his reaction to the idea of maybe losing nicky

the reaction being: pure fucking panic

and you know, this movie is crammed to the gills with stuff. the fact that none of those 3 moments, despite all showing relatively the same thing, werent cut, is important. the movie practically waves a flag that says ‘JOE IS AFRAID OF LOSING NICKY’ in blinking lights at the viewer

(and covering my bases: that isnt to say that nicky isnt afraid of joe dying, there are a couple times its kind of implied or shown nicky has that kind of fear too, but the movie doesnt prioritize showing it the way it does with joe. and ive also got another essay in me about how nicky’s fear of losing joe and joe’s fear of losing nicky are 2 different monsters from what we see of their reactions to loss/potential loss in the movie, but that’s a different conversation)

and: And! this reaction isnt just limited to nicky! we see it with andy too, which brings me to: bastard french man

joe’s anger with booker is interesting to me ‘cause its not in the comic. neither joe or nicky’s reaction to booker’s betrayal is shown-- we never see the moment they find out. and i keep wondering-- rucka said that when he was adapting the comics he wanted to do more character work, but also, he also said he knew that the comics and the movie had to be different

and they are different; the whole business with joe and nicky getting captured is different, and doesnt become nearly as dire as it does in the movie. and i keep wondering, why does joe’s reaction to booker’s betrayal go from ‘not important enough to even be shown’ to ‘reinforced several times over the course of-- maybe 20 minutes?’

and they dont do the same with nicky! we dont get much of any reaction from nicky towards booker besides a couple frowny faces. nicky barely looks at booker throughout the whole damn movie, and that holds up after his betrayal too. and even with the frowny faces, none of those shots are even centered on nicky-- so like. thats not really changed from the comic.

nicky’s reaction to booker’s betrayal is, again, not prioritized, joe’s is.

and is that because-- character work, rucka giving joe more development, or is that because the circumstance of the betrayal is different?

if you’re inclined to believe the latter, looking at all the differences between the comic and the movie, you know what the biggest is?

andy’s mortal in the movie. andy got shot in the movie. andy nearly died in the movie. because of booker’s betrayal.

and again. joe’s allowed to be angry he got captured and tortured. but in the comics, joe gives precisely 2 shits that he was captured and tortured. movie joe, not so much.

not to mention that he very pointedly -- ive seen a lot of people imply that joe was so angry at booker because his actions got nicky tortured. and again hes allowed to be angry about that. but we see him specifically say to booker, when booker says ‘all [me and andy] had was our grief’ joe replies ‘now you have even more’. that’s not about nicky getting tortured. that’s not about joe getting tortured. thats about the possibility that andy could be bleeding out in front of their eyes.

and that must have been especially terrifying for joe, because joe and nicky didnt know the extent of the damage done to andy, and nicky was at least red cross at some point, so he may have some knowledge of Mortal First Aid, but if andy’s reaction to the medical stuff at the corner store was any indication, the OG4 probably have a fairly vague sense of how fast Normal People heal, and what counts as fatal to them.

joe hears booker say ‘i killed her’ and ‘shes not healing’. andy’s covered in blood and already looks half dead. kozak is scrambling to hook andy up to stuff. for all joe knows, andy could be seconds or minutes from death in that scene. and shes so important to him, to him and nicky. theyve known her hundreds of years, she’s been their leader for hundreds of years, their closest friend, their oldest friend. the idea of losing her now must be terrifying.

and i think that reaction joe has when he first hears andy isnt healing is a really good synergy of that fear + anger response. you know? it’s like ‘oh god not this’ in a frightened way and ‘oh god not this’ in an vexed way. like ‘dont we have enough shit to deal with right now?’

and i think there’s something to be said about the fact that when nicky tells joe to stop, joe keeps yelling at booker. but when andy tells joe to stop, he literally doesnt say another single word to booker for the rest of the movie

and on top of that, we see joe sending andy these worried little glances throughout the penthouse fight. he was the one to tell the others to cover andy. like. he was visibly frightened for her.

and so joe finds out that booker’s betrayal was the reason for all this fear throughout the movie, and then joe has an outlet for it. so: he yells at him. so hes angry at him.

& thats what the movie keeps showing us, again and again. joe is put in a situation where he might lose a loved one, and that terrifies him like we dont see anything else scare him-- and then that fear leads to anger. i just think it was really. like. thoughtful and a precise attention to detail that that cycle was shown again and again for joe, that he didnt just, like, get pissed out of nowhere for no reason, he was given a specific and relatable reason for getting angry every time he did, and that anger also helps you get a better sense of who joe is & what he prioritizes.

ie. it all comes down to love, for him, and that’s like. the hallmark of his character (nicky’s too). like the base of him comes down to love. and.

i wuv him.

#and thats also to say that the base of him is love #but also fear #and i think in a similar way the base of nicky is love #but also faith #and that fear vs faith is one of the bigger differences between the two #anyways. #2thoughts anon #Anonymous #my_essays