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bookersebastien · 3 years

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With the last giftet you reblogged: I absolutely love the implication that Booker is/used to be the second in command, not Nicky or Joe who would both have a considerate amount of seniority.

The type of team dynamic that suggests is something I will think about a lot now.

its so interesting to think how the whole team dynamic has changed over the years. first its andy and quynh and lykon, andy assuming the leadership role and most definitely having quynh as her technical second (they were definitely more co-leaders), as lykon is the younger of the three but also because quynh is her partner in everything. then lykon dies and then joe and nicky show up, and the dynamic resumes in a similar way. then quynh disappears.

and that’s where everything changes. there’s an emptiness not only in their souls with her missing but there’s that symbolic space she left in their group, but neither joe or nicky really would take up the right hand man position. they work together and side by side, and the three of them manage for 300ish years until booker.

the boss or second in command for them is never about control or power over the decision making or anything, they’ve always worked and made decisions together, not afraid to fight and argue their opinions and not just taking anyone’s word. if they take andy’s orders it’s because they believe in them and that they’re the right thing to do.

so booker doesn’t assume any kind of real authority, but instead the second in command is really just for andy. she tells him its just the two of them always because joe and nicky do have each other, and as close as they all are they won’t understand what andy and booker went through.

so when booker shows up, grieving and tired and angry, andy is the one who connects with him the most at first. and i think it just happened that along the way, booker was who she would turn to, both to think and to drink about their problems. they both have that fatigued but still going attitude, they’re still trying and still doing what they can but both of them are still feeling their losses.

joe and nicky stick together, neither taking that position in the group, and i don’t feel like either of them would’ve wanted to stay in that position in the period after quynh and before booker. so it would have to come down to booker, but i think he needed it, he needed that relationship with andy to start the way it did to allow himself to integrate into the group with more comfort.

because one thing about booker is that he seems very adaptable, working with whatever he has to get the job done. literally why his fighting style is just ‘whatever works’ because he just does what he can with what he is given. that space in their team was just where he was needed at the time, and it stuck as time went on. he works the most with the tech (that we see anyway), dealing with possible jobs, etc.

and now nile is going to move into that position, though in a different way than booker. there was quynh, her partner, booker, her friend bonded by grief and similar personalities, and now nile, the unexpected addition that we can only wait and see what she’s going to do

#ask #the old guard #tog meta #this got long and rambly lol #im running on like 3 hours of sleep today so #usrbkr hm #Anonymous

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bookersebastien · 3 years

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since I love your headcanons/meta (if you're up to it) can I have your thoughts on the guard + fashion

andy

Andy probably has a pretty complicated relationship with fashion, like i think she does with most things in the modern world given the fact that it’s only a tiny spec of her lifetime

She’s spent her life watching thousands upon thousands of fashion trends come and go and was alive during the creation of many fabrics themselves

She’s been a warrior her entire life, we may not know the manner of her first death (or at least not from the movies) but we know she’s spent most of her life as an immortal fighting, both before and after she met quynh

Fashion for her was always at the very least comfortable and flexible, something she could travel and fight in without a moment’s notice

But to some extent how she looks, her image is a very important aspect of her, especially in the earlier part of her life

She was a famed fighter for so long, earning her name “fighter of man”, there were probably stories told of her and quynh, warrior women who no one can defeat, her clothing at that time at least semi reflected that, she wanted to be seen as “unbreakable” as she says in the movie

She had probably minimal armor, after all she doesn’t need it technically and would only prefer it to have less healing time if she took on less damage, but her clothing showed exactly who she was, every bit the warrior

As practical as she is, who she appears to be is still probably very much still tied to her identity, she may not be known anymore and doesn’t even want to be for the sake of their safety but her clothes are not just strictly practical, rather than be the warrior of myth she has now become a warrior of the modern age, a warrior of the shadows

Her clothes still reflect her younger self, the famed warrior, just scaled back and modernized. She wears calf-high boots, arm braces and fitted clothing in all black she cuts quite and imposing figure and that’s what i think she wants. She doesn’t necessarily use it to intimidate others, as her younger self may have done, this time her clothing is now to make her still feel powerful, a reflection of who she is now: skilled and deadly, ready at a moments notice to protect those she loves

While jeans and a tank top is a perfectly normal outfit, with the boots and braces you’d do a double take, wondering who she was, but it’s meant to blend in just enough but if you look closely enough at how tight the boots are laced and her posture, tank top carefully tucked in you’d start to wonder

I think she does actually like fashion, she’s seen so much of it and she probably sees things that remind her of something she saw hundreds of years ago, like seeing trends pop up again and it fills her with nostalgia. It reminds her of when she was in love with humanity, loved seeing what people created and invented and when she truly believed in their cause

But things definitely changed after quynh was thrown in the ocean, just had a less of desire and the clothes probably reminded her of quynh, what’d she’d wear and what she’d get for andy to wear and as modern times came around she stuck to stuff that was more practical, still a little fashionable, but stuff that could be worn doing anything from sleeping to fighting

I think her clothing in the movie, mostly black, reflects who she is as this time: a powerful and strong warrior who’s also afraid, she’s afraid that she spent her life fighting for something that doesn’t matter but also (pre-nile) afraid of what she’s going to do now that she said the world could burn - what does a 6,000+ immortal warrior do then?

booker

Booker is not unfashionable, and while his relatively apathetic and cynical nature might make you think fashion isn’t something he would care about, i think he does

He isn’t like joe who would go the extra step to make an outfit more aesthetically pleasing, but also he isn’t as super practical as nicky (he keeps his gun in his pants for fuck’s sake)

Booker is tired and wants to feel normal, to feel his humanity that he feels is slipping away from him even though it’s already been 200 years - he’s still adjusting and that’s because he never wanted this and still doesn’t completely accept this is his life now (hence at least a partial reason for his betrayal)

But i don’t booker is one to make too much of a fuss about what he’s wearing, he wants simple clothing that won’t make him look out of place, especially since he was the one who met with copley for that previous mission maybe he is the one who scouts missions as their seemingly resident computer person

So he goes for what a lot of people do: classic pieces of clothing in selection of relatively neutral colors that all work together. In their life it’s important to have clothes at the ready, both in their bags and at their safehouses and i’d bet at least most of his stuff would work together with no issues

Aside from the tac outfit of course, he mainly wears an assortment of jeans, boots, button downs and leather jackets in mostly blacks and grays with a couple faded blues and greens - any of these can be thrown on without an issue, it looks like a complete outfit and nothing about how he’s dressed is any way going to attrract attention

Plus this man doesn’t care enough about himself to make him look good rather than just being fine with what he has, he wants to die and doesn’t allow himself to feel the love he has from his family, dressing up to him isn’t going to add anything or make anything better

So in the sequel i’d love to see him deal with his pain and his betrayal head on and who knows maybe joe will buy him some zipper pants too and maybe booker will actually like them

nicky

Nicky is the other more practical one other than andy, but he lacks her attempt at keeping at appearances/empowerment

The majority of movies he’s wearing plain t-shirts and regular jeans with dad jackets, the only slightly impractical fashion choice being his hoodie from the tac outfit, which it does cover him up completely and allows him to cover his face more if needed but also it’s hot (i also like that post comparing the hoodie to the crusader’s chainmail helmet)

But nicky in essence is practical, he’s the protector of the group, always watching and always on the edges, he doesn’t care much i think for what he wears as long as it allows him to do his job

Yes of course he participated in fashions over the years, and will wear things joe picks out for him and occasionally what he picks out for himself, but that stuff is not for when there is a mission, not when people need help

But i think he usually gravitates towards simple like andy, something to run and fight in but he lacks andy’s past of fame, reverence, and notoriety (at least in the way she had it - he did fight in the crusades after all) so his clothing isn’t to do anything for him but to act as clothing, it holds no mental power over him, he has no image to project - he’s done so much that he wants to help people and protect his family and that’s it

I don’t think growing up in genoa before the crusades lent itself to that many fashion opportunities and while we aren’t sure of his exact status, i don’t think any of the guard were particularly wealthy (except possibly yusuf as the son of merchants) and being a priest at the time i’m sure didn’t make him wealthy in his adulthood either

And while he’s lived 900+ years, the way you grew up doesn’t just leave you, he was at least catholic, and i still think he holds his faith close, just in a different way now

Plus look at his tac outfit, the most comfortable looking (it is a hoodie after all) and he has half a dozen guns strapped to himself along with sword, he wants the ability to carry his things comfortably without impeding him in any way, he wants to be totally and completely prepared and is very much the typical dad in this sense, everything must be on hand so he can protect those he loves

Also you know this man owns cargo pants much to joe’s dismay

joe

we all know joe is the fashionable male among the guard, i mean the backwards baseball cap and the zipper pants? yeah

in his tac outfit, the hat really adds nothing to it besides aesthetic, it’s not shielding his eyes from the sun because he’s wearing sunglasses and it doesn’t aid him in any way during a fight unless he had decided to pull a booker and do “whatever works” and just like hit someone with it - it’s a purely aesthetic choice

but joe was the child of merchants and lived in an area with a rich history of colorful and beautiful fashion, the region was known for the lightweight fabrics and light silks that during the crusades, many were brought back to europe and astounded the europeans

i think that has stayed with joe, that complete appreciation and awe at the craft of making clothing and using clothing to show yourself and personality

joe is also a man of the arts, there was so much poetry and arts in the maghreb region, and while that existed in italy as well, nicky was a priest and probably wasn’t exposed to it much outside a religious context

joe is also an artist himself, he has such a grand appreciation for aesthetics and while clothing purely for aesthetics isn’t practical for the life they live unless they are on a break, he manages to infuse his clothing with his personality nonetheless

the backwards hat was fun, unnecessary but it also didn’t get in the way of his fighting. he probably just enjoyed the look (and i know we all did too) and the leather jacket with the hoodie and zippered pants at the end scene was just such an effortless cool look that was still practical but had a lot more personality and an attempted look™ than say nicky and his dad jacket

nile

most of what nile is wearing in the movie isn’t her choice of clothing, not that i don’t think she’d absolutely pick out that green bomber jacket but in the movie she wasn’t the one who picked it, it was packed for her

but the outfit she wears in the end is just like her, trendy and young and refreshing given that the rest of the guard sticks to their own styles they’ve been in the whole movie

but nile is the one who is most likely to branch out, she’s only in her late 20s and by her last scene in the movie it’s only been maybe a week or so since she became immortal, she hasn’t evolved a ‘be ready to fight’ kind of fashion and doesn’t have the hundreds of years of experience telling her to buy things that she can fight in as well as sleep in - now she was in the marines so to some extent but not with her own personal clothing choices

despite her chaotic introduction to being immortal, it won’t set in for a while that their lives are running from one danger to the next, taking breaks when they can, especially with andy’s renewed commitment to the job she and the others set out to accomplish, her clothing style will probably change as she settles into this new life

but we can see in her last scene, she is wearing comfortable clothing, a fitted shirt with a stylish yet somewhat more loose fitting jacket and looser pants (they look like joggers and i can’t completely remember if they are or not)

so while her clothes are comfortable, they are more fashionable than any of the others, and while this probably has lots to do with her age i think it’s very important to her current state of mind

she’s had the most insane weeks of her life, found out she’s not going to die for a very long time, found out there are others like her, and had to say goodbye to her family without seeing them again because she’s decided to stick with her new life

and this is a massive change for her, after being in the military for quite a few years, assuming she joined when she around 18-20 which i think she did enlist then especially given the fact that her dad passed when she was younger

life in the military is very controlled, so her having this sudden new gift but also this vast wide open future is probably terrifying to her, so much has changed so quickly, she hasn’t had the time to properly sort through how she’s feeling and truly realizing what this life means

her clothes are a reflection of one thing in her life she can currently control because she can’t control what’s going to happen in the world and where copley will find them a job or where they will be at any one time but she has control over herself so she dresses herself how she wants, how she’d dress if she was home

it’s some semblance of normality, some piece of herself that hasn’t changed and that she wants to express

quynh

while we don’t see quynh much besides in flashbacks and then in the final scene i think fashion is going to be something important to her

she spent 500 years drowning, unable to do anything, unable to save herself

nile said she was feeling insane and angry, quynh spent 500 years without an ounce of control over what was happening to her and regaining her life is something she is not going to take for granted

she’s going to live her life to the fullest, which includes wearing whatever she likes and wearing the colors she loves and the clothing that makes her feel beautiful and badass and powerful - a little like andy and a little like nile

it’s a huge part of her life she’s regained, clothing is something the whole world sees and part of how we perceive people and in a world that she doesn’t know at all she’ll want to craft herself an image because clothing is still one thing she can understand - the styles are all different but i have no doubts it’s something she took to quite quickly, having something she can control completely

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bookersebastien · 4 years

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Thoughts on the concept of time and the old guards relationship with it

ohh patrick this is super interesting

andy’s concept of time has changed a lot over the years, she’s over 6,000 years old and time hasn’t meant the same to her consistently over those years. she doesn’t remember a lot of her earlier life, not her family anymore and that is something that comes with time. to her she seems to have accepted it to some extent at least, she’s lived long enough to get to that. she spent thousands of years on her own, i don’t think during that time she had any much concept of time not when she was by herself moving around from place to place. but then found quynh and i think she became much more aware of how much time was passing, she became aware of the years together with her, especially after being alone for so long, or she’s at least aware of how long it’s been, maybe not the years but she understands that it’s been a very long time. and this is only multiplied after lykons death because now there’s an unknown time limit on their immortality and she becomes more aware of the time she has had with the two of them and aware of time passing because she could die any day. however, i don’t think she was that scared of the death after a few hundred years after lykons death because she knows roughly how long shes’s been alive, she knows that if she dies she’s already done so much there’s a sort of acceptance there. and then when quynh is gone, time is all she has to remember her, all she has is her memories of her and she’s suddenly aware of how much time she spent with her and doesn’t know how to feel, to have someone gone after spending thousands of years fighting side by side with them. time is the only concrete thing she has as a reminder of exactly how long it’s been, because to her it feels much longer than it has actually been. like she said, it’s what time has left behind, and to her time has left her behind and taken so much from her already

this was getting long so i’ll put a cut

send me thoughts on ______?

booker feels so much of time, if that makes sense. he feels every minute and every second pass, he remembers every moment since he woke up hung from that tree and it’s because he’s never wanted the life he ended up with so he’s conscious of how much time is passing, time he never wanted to have. he loves his immortal family, but he never wanted this life and yet he’s stuck with no choice but to live it despite the numbers of times i think he tried to end it. he feels the days and weeks, but to him it feels like longer, 200 years can so easily feel like 500 and living to 900, much less 6,000 sounds painful and almost impossible despite that he knows it’s not. time to him seems to move so fast yet so slow, he can so easily remember the early days of his new life, like it was yesterday, but it feels like forever ago, like another lifetime and in some ways it was. he’s changed, the world has changed. time is a cruel joke to him, meaningless in a way it only can be to someone who’s immortal but he find himself burdened by it, carrying something most would kill for, yet he’s died for it. it’ll take a while, some self-reflection, less booze and definitely some therapy for him to see time as anything else but a reminder of all he’s left behind

quynh, quynh who has lost 500 years of her life drowning in the ocean, has probably the weirdest relationship with time. she had thousands of years by andys side, felt invincible and then she got to see what having so much time really feels like every time she drowned and every time she woke up with booker’s image in her mind. she may have not realized how much time had passed but once she comes back she’s almost hyperaware of time, but unlike booker who mostly wallows in each passing day, quynh will take her chance to enjoy the time she was given back now that she’s free of the iron maiden and free to be with her family and her love again. time is precious to her now and she doesn’t want to waste any time she may have left, especially now that andy is mortal

joe and nicky are probably well aware of time, not in an exact way but they know it’s been a long time. they remember the time they met, they remember what the world was like. time to them is a gift, they’ve been given their soulmates and all this time to enjoy each other, it’s not something they will take for granted in any sense. they’ve been in love for over 900 years, and it’s certainly felt that long but in a way that they only want more, whatever the universe will give them they will take it as long as they have each other. not to mention how real time became once andy told them about lykon, he died before joe and nicky so the only way for them to know was when andy told them (or quynh but i think it was andy). so they make the most of every moment because after thinking they would live forever they know now that this life isn’t permanent and there’s no warning when it will end either, enjoying the ones they can and helping out where they are needed

another note about nicky is that time to him is a way to repent and make up for what he has done in the past. it probably took him decades to fully shake himself of his former beliefs but they’re always in the back of his mind, not as something he still remotely believes in but as a reminder of the person he was and the person he wants to be. so this time, this gift he has, this life he was given, to him is a way to help and he is grateful for it (also i’m talking about his belief in converting and killing people over the ideals of christianity not his faith as a whole - i still think he holds some faith but i am not the person to discuss that)

and nile who probably has the most “normal” concept of time. she’s been immortal for what? like a week? her immortality hasn’t really set in and no matter the ways in which she dies and has died, and no matter the utter and complete proof she has in the rest of the guard, she isn’t going to feel the immortality, not until maybe a few decades down the line and she’ll look at herself in the mirror and see herself just as young as the day she died. in the present time, she’s only been alive for what 27 (?) years, she feels the years pass just as we do, feeling like they’re going a bit faster every year. to her time is elusive, she hasn’t grasped yet what it means to really live beyond your years. she’s made some kind of peace with the idea, but she hasn’t live long enough to really see time as anything but no matter how much she prepares herself for the future. she probably feels weird about time now, knowing she has so much of it but knowing her life can’t be spent the way she would’ve liked to spend it as an immortal because there are dangers, some you run from and some you save others from. so slowly her relationship with time will change, but right now i think it remains something mysterious to her

#ask #andy-the-scythian #the old guard #tog hcs #tog meta #usrbkr hm #andromache the scythian #sebastien le livre #nile freeman #yusuf al kaysani #nicolo di genova #quynh #patrick tag

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bookersebastien · 4 years

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Some thoughts...but you know what I absolutely love about The Old Guard? I mean yes, the story is told well and the characters are amazing, but something unexpected I loved was the actual concept of immortals that the story uses. Most of the time I feel like we see immortals being completely invincible, and to some extent that ruins the stakes for them. If nothing can kill them, what is stopping them from winning? Realistically nothing.

The typical concept of immortals can often come off as superhero-esque and othered from those around them, but what The Old Guard did was made them still so completely human. They have their little competition with the baklava, and while Andy still is the jaded mentor character, I remember reading a post of how kind she is and that’s true. They are not impenetrable, superman types. They can die, and they do, and they feel the pain of their bodies healing themselves and she feels for Nile, it no doubt reminds her of when she first met the rest of the guard, or even when she herself realized her immortality.

That’s what humanizes them, they feel pain and they can die, but not only that is that they will really die one day when their immortality runs out. Yeah, it will likely be a long time from now, but still there is no telling what causes it to suddenly disappear. It is something they no doubt they have on their minds every time they head out on a mission (I mean we heard Andy’s voiceover in the beginning); they will continue to head into dangerous situations because they are the best options because they cannot due, but it is not lost on any of them that any mission could be their last.

We see how Joe hunches over Nicky after he gets shot through the mouth, he is utterly devastated for those few moments before he wakes up. We see how Andy begs Booker to wake up after getting blown up, she knows very well he could be gone forever, I mean she has seen it before. None of them want it to happen, but they know it will eventually, they’ve heard the story of Lykon and then eventually they see it happen to Andy. And it’s that knowledge of how everything can disappear without warning that keeps them so human when these people, who are hundreds of years old, have full right to be jaded assholes. Joe and Nicky still find excitement in each other, in the TV and champagne, Andy has sort of seen a renewed sense of purpose, and even Booker is not unkind, despite everything. If anything he is fully aware of how human he still is, dying over and over again and disappointed each time he wakes up and feels that grief and pain, emotions he wishes would disappear but being immortal doesn’t erase that, doesn’t let him forget.

#the old guard #andromache of scythia #sebastien le livre #yusuf al kaysani #nicolò di genova #nile freeman #tog meta #usrbkr hm

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