kaysanova

[kaysanova]

nicky, distressed: nile, nile. what is the english word for a slug but he has a house?

nile, confused: uh snail?

nicky, relieved, running into another room: sNAIL, JOE IT’S SNAIL

[kaysanova]

One of the things I appreciated about The Old Guard is that the characters aren't objectified. I mean, yeah, we objectify the fuck out them, but it wasn't filmed in a "look at all the sexy people we've got in this movie" kind of way.

In interviews, they talked about their training and fight choreography, not how much muscle they had to put on, how much water they didn't drink in order to get one shot of their abs...

There's no shots panning up to check out a characters legs/ass, no close ups of rippling, oiled muscles. There's no gratuitous nudity - the only time we see Booker shirtless, his intestines are stitching themselves back together. So sexy.

The only time we see Joe and Nicky shirtless is when they're strapped to lab tables and its not shot in a way that focuses on their bare chests at all (they could have - I've seen Marwan's Mens Health shoot). And the women aren't shown in states of undress at all.

So thank you, Gina Prince-Bythewood, for making a good movie with a talented cast and not a shiny piece of popcorn whose only draw is generically attractive half naked people. Appreciated. ❤️

[kaysanova]

Joe & Nicky in The Old Guard 2 (2025)

[kaysanova]

Joenicky making out in their movie haircuts. I’m full of joy

[kaysanova]

If we’re going to have to endure the heartache of Andromaquynh “Lovers to Enemies”, they’d better give us some flashbacks of Kaysanova “Enemies to Lovers”… cause, y’know, cinematic balance, or character foils, or something something.

[kaysanova]

OLD GUARD TWO JULY 2ND

TIME FOR MORE KAYSANOVA CONTENT SOON

[kaysanova]

#I Just Think He’s Neat

[kaysanova]

I finally watched The Old Guard and tumblr did not adequately prepare me for how funny the van kiss scene actually is. Like I've seen whole gif sets of Joe's impromptu love poem but that's not the half of it.

Dude are you sure you want to be making a homophobic jab at these people specifically

Joe: "Yeah he is and what about it, bitch boy" <- said with far more grace and eloquence

Nicky: "<3"

(This is where we give kudos to the actors for not smashing each other's teeth in when LAUNCHING at each other. Couldn't have been me)

Everyone is so taken aback they fully just watch for a whole second in, presumably, homophobic horror before all simultaneously deciding This Cannot Stand

you INTERRUPT joe and nicky? you interrupt their kiss like the football game? oh! oh! death for homophobes! death for homophobes for One Thousand Years!!!!

This isn't really part of the scene but "There's a TV, Joe!" is close enough that I'm going to add it. As an epilogue.

[kaysanova]

there's something very amatonormative about the way booker sees the world

he tells nicky and joe that they had always had each other, whilst andy and booker only had themselves and their grief and that's uncharitable and an amatonormative way of looking at the world.

yes, nicky and joe are in a long-term romantic and sexual relationship that is very solid, but that doesn't negate like... their platonic relationships?

when booker says that, it is so damn self-absorbed and naive and amatonormative

does he not realise that nicky and joe have always been with him too? that nicky and joe lost quynh too? sure, andy lost her lover but look at nicky and joe when they tell nile about quynh - they loved her and her loss deeply fucked them up.

booker's betrayal is so, so selfish and amatonormative. and sure he had his reasons - grief, alcoholism, depression - but those are not excuses, but explanations. I'm on the side of 'booker is a character and what he did was understandable and he clearly needs therapy' but 'holy SHIT let nicky and joe feel BETRAYED because they were and shouldn't have to moderate their reaction to protect ickle booker' - like the amount of work booker needs to put in for a proper reconciliation is astronomical.

anyway I digress. by saying 'you always had each other', booker is being an amatonormative little shit who downplays both nicky and joe's platonic relationships, I love and care for the other immortals, including him, but also that they have suffered loss too - their families, and how their first meeting wasn't exactly serendipitous.

anyway! booker's framing of nicky and joe is deeply fucked up, stemming from amatonormativity and booker's worldview of competing grief. like booker.... grief sucks but it's not a competition, y'know?

anyway! this is a Reading TM of booker's worldview vis a via nicky and joe that I've felt strongly about because booker just like. is so self-absorbed in his grief that he cannot recognise and appreciate what he has, nor can he recognise that nicky and joe's lives haven't been sunshine and rainbows because they're in a romantic relationship.

like bro. they love you. go to therapy.

[kaysanova]

[image description: two digital sketches side by side, both of Joe and Nicky. The first is of Joe leaning over Nicky kissing his forehead. Nicky’s head is tilted back. The second is a moment later, with Joe resting his cheek on Nicky’s forehead and turned slightly toward the viewer. Joe’s hands are under Nicky’s chin and Nicky is smiling. /ID]

[kaysanova]

[kaysanova]

do you guys remember the Old Guard. remember when there was a major mainstream hollywood action scifi motion picture starring hot women with guns where gay people kissed on the mouth passionately. and the movie was both critically and financially successful. that movie feels like a fucking fever dream. i'll never achieve the high i got when that movie came out ever again

[kaysanova]

[kaysanova]

Thinking of a Joe-is-the-new-immortal au where Andy and Nicky - who’ve known each other for like 800 years at this point, and it was just the pair of them after Quynh and before Booker-and-Nile - have a no personal boundaries regarding space or nudity or history with each other because they’ve literally known each other for nearly a thousand years and loved each other so long (thinking of the fond hug in Marrakesh)(Platonic with a capital P) that the realms of normality have been lost over time regarding the other

AND ITS DRIVING JOE INSANE

Like I image this Joe, modern Joe, to be a hopeless romantic, emphasis on the hopeless, used to pining rather than loving because the modern world is so fast and busy and people rarely have the time to slow down, so he sees Nicky and Andy asleep on the sofa drooling on each other like a pair of cats and resigns himself to pining, like , oh of course this hot kind man is taken, better pine from afar, and he’s happy to do so like an idiot instead filling sketchbook after sketchbook with portraits and idle romantic doodles

And Nile and Booker are no help because they’ve got so used to the Nicky and Andy shenanigans that to them it’s just Tuesday. Andy walks out the bathroom completely nude to ask Nicky if her tattoo has faded yet? Normal Wednesday behaviour. Nicky wakes up Andy from a cat nap - waking a bear would be safer - with a spoon to her mouth asking if the soup tastes like the one they had in Alexandria ‘28*, yet? Must be Thursday. Andy prods at Nicky’s mole when he’s frowning to get him to smile like it’s a press-release button? Friday. (Wouldn’t your sister-like-figure do the same?) Nicky content to being used as a blanket because Andy remembers Russia ‘14 and she’s not regrowing her toes again. A specific Saturday in 1814 that Booker, new to immortality at the time, tries not to remember either.

*1228, Nicky still can’t perfect the recipe after all this time and it’s driving him nuts

Andy’s twigged what’s going on because she knows Nicky like the back of her own hand, but she’s also not going to change anything because this is the dynamic - Nicky’s been her brother her family her constant her rock after Quynh for so long now, just like she’s been to him,that Joe needs to get used to that, she’s not ready to lose someone else, she also doesn’t want Nicky’s heart to get broken because she’s been around for that with mortals over the years and it’s always messy.

And Nicky is so in love at the point, with this passionate artist who sees all this beauty in the world, but Joe keeps writing off what he’s doing with all the strength - stupidity- of a millennial raised around toxic masculinity and no-homo, and done his best to reject them but he’s now faced with a 900 year old man, cut him some slack, throwing up roadblocks to his own romantic happiness because he’s not expecting anything at all, like Nicky was raised in a different time, men acted differently towards each other then, they were more affectionate, I’m sure it doesn’t mean what it sounds like ~ I love you - wait what?

[kaysanova]

Everyone who got into The Old Guard because of the movies PLEASE read the comics they’re fucking hold and Nile and Andy’s relationship is so fucking funny

[kaysanova]

Marwan Kenzari at the "The Promise" Premiere at the TCL Chinese Theater IMAX on April 12, 2017 in Los Angeles, CA

📸 by Jim Ruymen

[kaysanova]

Giza 🇪🇬