Let it not be said that I tried.
So, as I’ve talked about more often than frankly healthy, I fell in love with The Old Guard mid last year. I loved the story, liked the comics (though the art left something to be desired), and started really following the actors. I’ll be the first to say that it became a borderline obsession.
Hell, it even got me back on Tumblr! I’d been very on-and-off during the pandemic, but this movie really caught me, and I fell into the community. There was a strong writing side, the art side was amazing, and the research side was on point.
So… what happened?
Well. A couple of things.
Burnout is real, and so is honestly holding onto hope with no real news. Since the end of January, when we found out that TOG2 was in active development, we’ve heard exactly one thing from anyone involved. During a Instagram AMA, Matthias Schoenaerts (Booker) was asked if there was a sequel, which he answered “YES”. And… that’s it. That’s all. Nearly ten months from the first film dropping, and nothing else but a production magazine listing it in development and one of the actors confirming. And I’m sorry, but that’s just not enough proof.
My family has had ties to Hollywood. Not in a substantial way, but we have. My grandfather knew some of the Hollywood greats from the 50s and 60s. And during the 80s and 90s, my uncle was frequently a script delivery driver. He’s also made friends with people in the industry.
I won’t say that no news means trouble, because it could all just be tied up in the contract stage or the writing stage. You know, before the public get’s involved. But I still feel off, because every other day Netflix is announcing sequels to shows and movies released around the same time or after TOG, and yet we get radio silence.
But that’s not the only reason I’m kinda down.
When the film was released, the fans picked apart each scene. Because that’s what you do. Every scene, every frame, every line of dialogue. That’s how we saw Joe sleeping with his leg between Nicky’s legs, Joe and Nicky holding hands on the train while sleeping, Nicky’s little skip during their final assault on Merrick’s penthouse… It’s part of the fandom.
The problem is, as time went on, it seemed like everything took a turn. Suddenly, you couldn’t like Booker without being a horrible person. Nicky was a one point labeled a N*zi, simply because of how he talked to Joe in exactly one panel in Tales Through Time #1 (which, was bullshit anyways). Nile being in the military was labeled as extremely problematic.
Basically, a portion of the fanbase went from nitpicking the film for content and loving every second of it, to nitpicking the film for content and screaming about it.
Now, I’ll be clear, I stayed away from that group. But they got more vocal. If you didn’t like the Immortal Husbands (Joe/Nicky), you were homophobic. If you thought that having them have a threesome with Booker was a good idea, guess again. Or, hell, if you thought of giving Joe a wife before he left for the Crusades and met/was killed by Nicky, just don’t, because the self-imposed “saviors of canon” would come out of the woodwork. Heck, there was a time that if you liked Nicky more than Joe (for whatever reason), you were labeled as racist. Yeah, you read that right. It was frankly disgusting.
Honestly, what killed me the most was all the commentary about the military. Look, I know that the military has done bad things. I’m not excusing it. Hell, I can be vocal about it, too. However… I come from a military family. My father served in the Air Force during Operation Desert Storm. My other uncle (not the delivery driver, the one I don’t speak to), served during peace-time in Germany, including helping out with a volunteer fire department. My grandfather? WWII and Korea. He liberated two death camps. He saved more people I probably could ever name. During his tour in Korea, he saved the woman who would go on to be my grandmother, who worked at the US State Department in Seoul, Korea. And he was also involved in missions into North Korea, but none of us have the clearance to actually know what he did. And now? My mom worked for the Veterans Administration. And I’m trying to get in. I almost joined the military myself, but I have a debilitating fear of real guns (I can watch them on TV or in films, but being around them in the real world sends me into panic attacks. I can barely stand to see them in holsters the few times I’ve interacted with police.)
I understand the racial issues, which is what these people list as the main reason Nile joining the military is problematic. But… that’s not entirely accurate. She flat out says she joined to follow in her father’s footsteps. Yes, getting out of South Chicago, where there were “a million different ways we could have went left” was a factor. But I really think it’s called following her father. Honoring his sacrifice.
Every time I saw a post demeaning the military’s presence in the film, I felt a tiny part of me cry. Because honestly, it seemed like people missed the point. People missed why the military existed in the first place, and why it was in the film.
In the past few months, while I was writing my Febuwhump prompts, I noticed a major shift in the content being posted on Tumblr (where the majority of the fandom lives). There were so many “anti” posts that I didn’t want to check the tags. And I was only doing so when I needed inspiration for whatever prompt I was pulling myself into.
When the discord I’m on (The Immortal Disasters) started getting into 9-1-1, I honestly didn’t give it a second thought to jumping into that fandom. And while there is still discourse, it’s nowhere near as bad as people being accused of supporting n*zis and being racist for liking “insert character here” more than “second character”. (Anti-Ana is basically the real big issue right now, because while I like the actress, the writers have done here character dirty by giving her nothing to work with, no personality, and completely shoehorning her in with Eddie, where they have no chemistry. And also are making leaps in logic that are frankly terrifying considering they’re doing a season-spanning COVID storyline… And on the Lone Star, TK pushed Carlos in a fight and their apology was off screen and no one is happy about it. Though I think the scene was cut for time and a line was thrown in to cover for it.)
Anyway, so, yeah. At this point, I’ve completely stepped back. I’ll continue to work on my TOG/CM crossover, because I love it. But that’s about it, until we get sequel news. I’m stepping back for my mental health. No one deserves to be treated like above for having a favorite character, or for liking a pairing that isn’t mainstream, or for just liking a storyline choice.
Hopefully we get news soon. I think it’s about damn time.
Until next time!
