#Chinese Nicky

[youssefguedira]

V, JoeNicky & Nile

V. An abandoned or empty place.

When Joe pulls the sheet off the couch it kicks up enough dust that it makes Nile sneeze. The couch underneath is old, wooden frame rotting, fabric stained and full of holes where moths have eaten away at it. 

“Sorry,” Joe says to Nile when she finally manages to get the sneezing under control. “Didn’t realise it was that bad.” He puts his hands on his hips and looks down at the couch. Nile looks it over.

“There’s no saving that,” she says, wiping at her eyes. She can heal from falling over ten stories, but she can’t get away from allergies.

Joe frowns. “I liked that couch.”

The house is older than anywhere else they’ve brought her, and has been abandoned for long enough that it’s falling apart. But through some trick of posing as their own sons, or something, Joe and Nicky still own it, even if there’s a giant hole in the roof and all the windows are broken. Why they’d decided to come back here, Nile doesn’t know, but it’s a nice enough area, and a good distraction from, well. Everything. Growing back a leg, she’s discovered, is not fun. 

From one of the other rooms – she thinks it’s the kitchen, she’s not actually sure where Nicky had wandered to – there’s the sound of something breaking and crashing to the ground, and a muffled curse. 

Joe makes a questioning noise in the vague direction of the kitchen. A few moments later, Nicky appears in the doorway, covered in dust. “I am okay,” he says. “But I think we will need to go out to eat tonight.”

“Nothing?” 

Nicky shakes his head. “Unless you want to start a fire and go hunt some rabbits.”

Joe grins. “Just like old times, right?”

Nile shakes her head firmly, which makes Nicky smile. She loves them, but there’s no way they’re doing that. 

“We can probably clear out enough space in here,” Joe says, gesturing to the floor. “Get the sleeping bags out of the car. Probably have to start a fire anyway, but…”

Nile looks around again while Joe says something to Nicky in Arabic that makes him laugh. The house is falling apart, sure, but it’s structurally stable, and the bones are all there. It could be something. They’ve got time to make it something. 

Nicky is the one who goes for pizza in the end – he doesn’t trust Nile and Joe to order it if left to their own devices – while they try to clear out a space in the living room. Eventually, though, after Nile has another sneezing fit, Joe suggests they just take the sleeping bags outside instead, which works out a lot better. He sets about starting a fire with practiced ease while Nile sets out the sleeping bags around it. They’re far enough away from civilisation that she can’t hear cars passing by, which is kind of surreal, and the stars are brighter than she’s ever seen them. 

When Nicky gets back, two boxes balanced on one arm and a bottle of wine in the other, he looks over their makeshift camp and laughs. “Just like old times, then?” he asks.

Joe grins. “Except we have pizza.”

“And actual sleeping bags,” Nile says.

“Ah, these modern inventions could never quite match the comfort of a pile of furs,” Joe says wistfully. Nile gives him a look. She’s ninety percent sure that one’s bullshit, but she can never quite tell with him. 

Nicky sets down the pizza boxes, and jogs back to the car to grab the pack of plastic wine glasses they’d bought before they got here. 

“We should’ve bought marshmallows,” Nile says. “Could have made s’mores.”

“Well, we’ll have to go to the hardware store tomorrow anyway,” Joe points out. “And I think it’ll be a little while before we can actually sleep in there.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow,” Nicky agrees.

[thisispoggers]

Umm Happy Year of the Dragon

[clockspur]

The Great Grim

[theapplehairgirl]

⋆｡˚ ⋆｡˚ 

[nickysfacts]

I hope everyone gets a chance to enjoy the cherry blossom festival this year!

🌸⛩️🌸

[tariah23]

Not to be a loser but when has Nicki ever mentioned that she liked anime before…….. she had a harajuku phase but that was part of her brand back when she came out, which isn’t related to anime at all. It’s like… they’re seeing all of these weebs gush over Megan and want a piece of it or something.

[kdram-chjh]

Cdrama: Bu Bu Jing Xin (2011)

Bu Bu Jing Xin mv - One Persistent Thought

Watch this video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBCPzULxJTA

[cinemajunkie70]

A very happy birthday in the afterlife to John Cassavetes!

[adamwatchesmovies]

A Chinese Ghost Story (1997)

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

Dig deep into your box of OAVs and you might find a copy of A Chinese Ghost Story, which is not the worst anime film I’ve ever seen, but should certainly be considered a contender. Badly integrating traditional 2D animation with CGI that would’ve felt at home in Spawn, it features an incomprehensible story you’ll be eager to see end.

Tax collector Ning (voiced by Michael Donovan) and his dog Solid Gold (Scott McNeil) runs into monks White Cloud (Richard Newman) and Ten Miles (Matt Smith). After explaining that they are exorcists who scour the land for malevolent spirits, they fly off to battle their rival, Red Beard (James Wong). Wandering into a ghost town, Ning sees the beautiful spirit Shine (Sylvia Chang) and falls in love, but even if she reciprocates his feelings, how can a ghost and a man be together?

Even without the abundant and unappealing 3D imagery crammed into nearly every scene, this is not a particularly good-looking movie. The characters range from realistic to so exaggerated they barely look human, which doesn’t help make the plot more digestible. It’s possible the English dub has mangled the story beyond repair but I can’t imagine Solid Gold was ever funny, and Ning spends so little time talking to Shine it’s impossible to buy that he’d be willing to give up his entire life just to be with her.

This plot has major pacing issues. It takes an eternity for Ning to realize things the audience will catch immediately, like the fact that he’s walked into a ghost town full of flesh-eating spirits and should probably leave immediately. At other points, we’re introduced to concepts and characters so quickly, you’ll hardly know who they are even at the end of the film. The exorcists and ghosts pull new abilities out of nowhere when the plot demands them to, and all the while every attempt at comedy falls so flat you’ll wonder if you haven’t died and gone to a Hell that’s been specially tailored just for you.

I don’t know what it was about A Chinese Ghost Story. Minutes in, I realized this was no good. I’ve seen much worse over the years – from the rape-happy Wicked City and Ninja Scroll, to the hilariously awful Battle Arena Toshinden – but something about this one drove me up the wall. I wished something - ANYTHING - would cut off the video and save me from the displeasure I was experiencing.

I should’ve known what I was getting into just looking at the DVD. It’s clearly Frankensteined together from a bunch of unrelated shots and no attempt has ben made to match the colors or hues. It’s actually a perfect representation of the film: a disjointed, ugly mess that wouldn’t be acceptable regardless of the language it’s presented in, or the place it originated from. (English Dub on VHS, February 7, 2018)

[nighty-night-nh]

I think im about to break and pay a whole 6,000 for a furry adopt that I might NEVER use because I have too many ocs as is but she's too pretty 😭

[i-3at-s0ap]

I hate perspective 💯💥🔥💯🔥🙌 (also Nicky is a letter jacket girlie I will die on this hill :3)

[Image ID: Nicky close from dungeons and daddies drawn on a Nintendo 3ds. He is a short Chinese teen looking at the viewer. He is a demon with fiery hair, a tail and horns. He is drawn in a very forced perspective pose and is smiling jokingly at the viewer. End ID]

Alt version under cut

I tried to change his legs a bit???? Idk if it worked lmao

[Image ID: the same image as before, but his legs have been changed to sharper points as per the forced perspective style. End ID]

[sleepythug]

What are some movies that every aspiring cinephile should watch?

battleship potemkin (sergei eisenstein, 1926)

city lights (charlie chaplin, 1931)

M (fritz lang, 1931)

freaks (tod browning, 1932)

brief encounter (david lean, 1945)

out of the past (jacques tourneur, 1947)

the third man (carol reed, 1949)

late spring (yasijuro ozu, 1949)

kiss me deadly (robert aldrich, 1955)

a man escaped (robert bresson, 1956)

touch of evil (orson welles, 1958)

la dolce vita (federico fellini, 1960)

peeping tom (michael powell, 1960)

man who shot liberty valance (john ford, 1962)

the exterminating angel (luis buñuel, 1962)

shock corridor (samuel fuller, 1963)

kwaidan (masaki kobayashi, 1964)

dragon inn (king hu, 1967)

playtime (jacques tati, 1967)

once upon a time in the west (sergio leone, 1968)

two-lane blacktop (monte hellman, 1971)

aguirre, wrath of god (werner herzog, 1972)

touki bouki (djibril diop mambety, 1973)

the conversation (francis ford coppola, 1974)

the passenger (michelangelo antonioni, 1975)

nashville (robert altman, 1975)

the killing of a chinese bookie (john cassavetes, 1976)

mikey and nicky (elaine may, 1976)

sorcerer (william friedkin, 1977)

days of heaven (terrence malick, 1978)

blow out (brian de palma, 1981)

8 diagram pole fighter (lau kar-leung, 1984)

mishima: a life in four chapters (paul schrader, 1985)

tampopo (jūzō itami, 1985)

blue velvet (david lynch, 1986)

something wild (jonathan demme, 1986)

landscape in the mist (theo angelopoulos, 1988)

sonatine (takeshi kitano, 1993)

salaam cinema (mohsen makhmalbaf, 1995)

fallen angels (wong kar-wai, 1995)

taste of cherry (abbas kiarostami, 1997)

cure (kiyoshi kurosawa, 1997)

the thin red line (terrence malick, 1999)

beau travail (claire denis, 1999)

yi yi (edward yang, 2000)

all about lily chou chou (shunji iwai, 2001)

memories of murder (bong joon-ho, 2003)

dogville (lars von trier, 2003)

tropical malady (apichatpong weerasethakul, 2004)

silent light (carlos reygadas, 2007)

sparrow (johnnie to, 2008)

holy motors (leos carax, 2012)

phoenix (christian petzold, 2014)

personal shopper (oliver assayas, 2016)

[theapplehairgirl]

*:🐇:*

[nickysfacts]

With giant wings like that, it’s dragon dances would literally shake the planet!🎶

☁️🦅☁️

[ninyard]

The monsters and their ability to pick up languages is so interesting to me so here’s some random HCs about monsters + languages that are definitely not original at all:

- Neil learned French in Europe before him and Mary found their way to French-speaking Canada. He essentially had to semi-adopt the language discrepancies while he was there, and even though his fluency is in French from France, sometimes he messes up and pronounces things weirdly or differently (and Kevin frequently makes fun of him for it)

- Kevin has some rusty Japanese that he was forced to learn growing up. He can understand it pretty well, and can somewhat speak it to a lower level, but he can’t read or write it. He’s not fluent, and probably couldn’t hold a conversation with a native speaker, but he could understand his Japanese counterparts in the Nest when he needed to.

- In turn Kevin isn’t able to order in Japanese at a restaurant, but he could explain the rules of Exy to someone fairly coherently if he had to.

- This isn’t an original thought by any means but Neil and Kevin definitely speak in French when they’re by themselves just to make sure they don’t lose it.

- They sometimes make calls to each other on the court in French, and because of this, most of the team picks up very basic calls in French. None of them can actually speak it, but Andrew picks up a little more than the rest, having spent so much time with Kevin. Again, couldn’t hold a conversation, but every now and again he recognises certain words in their conversations.

- Neil is like a walking version of those White Guy Speaks Chinese And Stuns Waitress (he can understand her?!?) polyglot youTube videos. It becomes more of a hobby for him once he’s settled and the FBI are off his back, but the foxes are constantly shocked by how many languages he can speak. He is fluent in English, French, and German of course, with some conversational Spanish, but he can pretty much have a basic interaction in most of the languages of countries he’d been in. His Dutch is the worst, because he could never quite grasp the proper pronunciation of things, but one time he speaks to a waiter in Italian and Andrew can’t believe it.

- (RIP Neil Josten, you would’ve loved duolingo)

- When he goes to the Olympics he’s like a kid in a candy store. It’s like a subconscious bingo game for him to speak to someone from every country at least once.

- Aaron loves listening to music in German. He would definitely drag Nicky to a rave if they ever found themselves in Berlin.

- Katelyn asks him whenever they have their kid if he wants to raise them bilingual, but he decides not to because he only really learned German for Nicky and his brother, and doesn’t really speak it at all after he graduates.

- Neil and Nicky study Spanish together sometimes. It helps Nicky stay close to his roots now that his immediate family is pretty much out of the picture. It means way more to him than Neil even knows.

- Another unoriginal one but Andrew and Neil definitely do learn sign language in the future. I could talk about this one forever.

- When Kevin gets frustrated, he finds it hard to speak ANY language. He messes up words in English, forgets how to say things, and occasionally is the butt of the joke when he combines a French and English word accidentally.

- Kevin watches anime when nobody is around. He thinks dubbed anime is a crime.

- Andrew thinks he’s pretty good at German until he tries to have a conversation with Erik and realises wow native speakers talk a lot faster than we do. You wouldn’t know, because even if he just understands half of a sentence, he can usually piece together what is being said 90% of the time, and he would never admit out loud that he needs Erik to slow down when he’s talking so he can understand him.

- He is, however, REALLY good at accents. He has a talent for speaking gibberish but sounding as if he’s speaking fluent French. It drives Kevin up the wall when he does it, but he also hates when he can’t understand what Kevin and Neil are saying to each other.

And Bonus:

- Jeremy is really bad at accents. He is initially frustrated by Jean and his French, but once he understands that it is Jean’s first language (that the Moriyama’s took from him), he makes an effort to try and learn. He’s just really, really bad at it. Jean cringes every time he tries, because he speaks with a heavy American accent. Jean is not pretentious about his language, but he is, at the end of the day, French. So when Jeremy says bonjour in that hideous so-Cal accent, it’s in part endearing that he’s trying, but mostly like nails on a chalkboard.

[edgrara]

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐂 𝐃𝐎𝐄𝐒 𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐌𝐄𝐑 𝐃𝐄𝐅𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐍?

feat - Raiden, Kung Lao, Johnny Cage, Kenshi Takahashi

No warnings, sfw, fluff

*DISCLAIMER - this is my opinion of what i think they listen so im sorry if its not to your liking*

𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍

He doesn’t really listen to a lot of genres but definitely listen to Chinese instrumental music due to his culture growing up

Would listen to jazz artists such as Michael Buble and Frank Sinatara 

His favourite songs would be ‘Fly me to the moon’ and ‘Sway’

Maybe listens to a bit of the trending songs like ‘Standing next to you’ and ‘3D’

Doesn’t like Rock a lot as he finds it loud and overwhelming to listen

𝐊𝐔𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐀𝐎

Same w raiden, he would listen to Chinese instrumental music 

He listens to mostly Pop, maybe Justin Bieber and The Weekend?

Listens to K-pop sometimes like ‘Love shot’ and ‘Bang Bang Bang’

Would be singing ‘What do you mean’ the WHOLE day to the point where Raiden gets irritated and fed up w him

He would sit for hours listening to music

Johnny probably introduced him to Pop music 

𝐉𝐎𝐇𝐍𝐍𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐆𝐄

Has white man music taste

Listens to Pitbull, Justin Bieber and Chris Brown

favourite song of course, its ‘International Love’

He secretly listens to Nicki Minaj and tries to rap the lyrics

His go to karaoke song is ‘Last Friday Night’ and ‘California Girls’

Has a great ton of playlist for each mood

𝐊𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈 𝐓𝐀𝐊𝐀𝐇𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐈

Doesn’t really have a favourite song 

He does listens to j-pop a little bit like Fuji Kaze

He would go on strolls while listening to music

Has dad music taste

Prefers to listens to bands than solo artists 

Has a ‘The Beatles’ t-shirt 

reblogs, likes and shares are appreciated!

@edgrara ‘23