Anonymous asked: Can you do John Wick for that headcanon post you reblogged?

You’re darn right I can do John Wick!  For THIS meme!

A: what I think realistically

John didn’t get into trouble as a kid.  John was a well-behaved student, known for being intelligent and quiet and unremarkable.  John never got into fights and no one ever questioned where he got bruises, because no one ever noticed.  When John left high school, he joined the military and did a four year tour with very little action.  And then he fell off the fucking map.  He still has living family.  They believe he’s dead.

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

John definitely calls in, like, life debts to get people to watch his dog while Shit’s Going Down.

“I need a favor.”

“John,” the smiling English assassin says, “after that time in Bulgaria you know you only need to ask.”

“I need you to watch my dog.”

There’s a long pause, but the assassin’s smile doesn’t crack.  “Does he have a name?”

“…no.”

“Okay.”  John is a weird dude, even as assassins go.  The English assassin rolls with it like a champ.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

For the record, I don’t have any friends who have seen John Wick except for the people who have asked me about it on here.  

That being said: John hasn’t been to visit his wife’s grave since he buried her.  At first it was because he physically couldn’t make himself do it.  Those first weeks were such a grey haze of…weight, more than anything else–even the air seemed too heavy to breathe–that he couldn’t leave the house.  Even with Daisy, it was all he could do to get up and take care of her.  Going to the cemetery…no way.

And then once Daisy was dead…John was busy.  John was fighting.  John was killing.  John had a purpose and damned if he was going to turn away from it.  

He was planning to go see his wife’s tombstone the morning after he got home.  Instead his house gets blown up and he loses everything of hers that he still owned.

D: what would never work in canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

You’ll never tell me that John’s wife wasn’t a world-class thief.  Like, she is to the thief world what John is to the assassin world.  They called her the Wraith, and her Interpol file is almost as thick as his, but instead of being a trail of mercilessly efficient kills it’s a laundry list of precious paintings and jewels and artifacts stolen from uncrackable safes and impenetrable museums.

They met while she was stealing a Picasso from one of John’s targets.  A classic story: girl meets boy, boy murders target, girl takes painting, girl breaks into boy’s safehouse with champagne.  “To celebrate our mutual successes,” she says, and John is gone.

Instead of making a deal with the Devil, she stole the most cherished statue owned by a leading member of her own High Council, and ransomed her freedom back with it.  She would have been free for all her natural life–and, John supposes, she was.

It’s just they both expected her natural life to be a lot longer, is all.

Anonymous asked: i am here to ask about these legion john wick feelings. your timer begins now. do not disappoint.

Listen, I know they’re making a third one to close the trilogy and I’m pumped as fuck for it but that being said I’m going to be spectacularly disappointed if it doesn’t end with John as the manager of the Continental.

I have a lot of disjointed half-thoughts about this, but it basically sums up as: BUT THAT’S HOW STORIES WORK.  John breaks the ONLY LAW in the underworld when he kills someone on Continental ground, he renders himself an outlaw among this community of outlaws, and like.  Outlaws and kings are members of the same category, those who are not bound by the rules, IDK man I didn’t take a class about homo sacer but my roommate did and I absorbed a lot of it by exposure?  @lathori be proud of me.  Basically what I’m saying here is please make it a thing that, in the process of being a badass and saving his own life, John reveals that Manager Wednesday (I think his name is actually Winston but my feelings about American Gods have intersected with my feelings about John Wick and therefore he is Manager Wednesday, an inveterate con artist and liar who low-key has supernatural abilities and enjoys the Absolute Belief that his people have in his authority and power) is forging Krugerrands or whatever and takes over.  OR, arguably even better, Manager Wednesday either dies (good! kill everyone John cares about, I want to see him suffer, Keanu Reeves does a good Suffer) or just…retires.  Like, the only way to retire is if you just disappear and the only way to just disappear is if you have the power to make it happen.  

Or, arguably THE BEST, Manager Wednesday owes John an old favor for saving his life and just kind of promotes him.  I am JUST SAYING that it would be a really quality twist to have the end of the movie be a brief conversation between John and Manager Wednesday about how much John sacrificed to Get Out and how much he’s right back where he started, and then Manager Wednesday leaves and John watches him go and sighs and starts to stand…and stops.  There’s a Continental key card left on the table, with a single gold Krugerrand on top of it.  John takes it to the front desk and asks which room it gets him into, and he’s simply told “top floor”, and he takes the elevator up, battered and exhausted but alive and he’s going to find one more answer before he sleeps for a million years.  The elevator doors open and John (plus his dog, kept safe by friends who Did This For John when he asked) walks to the only door in the antechamber, and opens it with the key card.  It’s Manager Wednesday’s penthouse suite, impeccably made up and cleared out of all personal possessions, and there’s a piece of stationary laid on the pillow under another Krugerrand.

John, the note says, no one ever really talks about what makes a manager, so I’ll tell you.  We’re the ones who can manage, no matter what goes wrong.  

I’ve cleared it with the others.  Welcome to your new life.

Anonymous asked: Moran, have you seen John Wick 1 or 2? And if you have, what are your thoughts/feelings on the ball of angry Keanu Reeves plays?

I have seen John Wick and very much want to see John Wick 2 because I will tell you a few things that are very important to me:

  • Angry Keanu Reeves
  • Beautifully choreographed fight scenes
  • Dogs!  (Yes a dog dies and it’s very sad but he gETS ANOTHER DOG, headcanon that John Wick is the only assassin in the world who has 15 dogs at home, they’re all beautiful and incredibly well cared for and he loved them all very much.)
  • Beautifully choreographed fight scenes iN SUITS
  • Honestly Keanu Reeves in general?  I like him a lot.  I was introduced to Bill & Ted very young and have not been able to figure out what the fuck people’s issue with him is since then.  I recommend Constantine for more gratuitous Keanu Reeves violence with intricate underworlds and good one-liners.  Constantine is one of my top five favorite movies and I’m actually weirdly into the theology in it.
  • Complex networks of underground criminal enterprises with Rules (and God save you if you break The Rules)
  • Literally any form of media in which the main character is the best and most competent person in any given room, and which isn’t afraid to embrace that wholeheartedly (I really dislike the concept of a character being ‘too competent’ but that’s a separate rant)
  • Neutral ground hotels/bars/whatever
  • The moment on the phone with the Russian mob boss where he’s very angry that someone dared to hit his (useless) son, and he’s told that the guy killed John Wick’s dog and took his car, and the mob boss just goes very silent for a moment before he says “Oh”

So anyway I love that movie it’s very fun and I like movies with a lot of gratuitous detail in their criminal empires.  Also apparently Keanu Reeves trained for John Wick at the same time that Charlize Theron was training for Atomic Blonde (I haven’t even seen that movie yet but I can already tell you: we could make a religion out of that) and they sparred a lot during that time period.