#Famous Americans and Why They Were Wrong
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"The studios thought they could handle a strike. They might end up sparking a revolution"
by Mary McNamara
"If you want to start a revolution, tell your workers you’d rather see them lose their homes than offer them fair wages. Then lecture them about how their “unrealistic” demands are “disruptive” to the industry, not to mention disturbing your revels at Versailles, er, Sun Valley.
Honestly, watching the studios turn one strike into two makes you wonder whether any of their executives have ever seen a movie or watched a television show. Scenes of rich overlords sipping Champagne and acting irritated while the crowd howls for bread rarely end well for the Champagne sippers.
This spring, it sometimes seemed like the Hollywood studios represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers were actively itching for a writers’ strike. Speculations about why, exactly, ran the gamut: Perhaps it would save a little money in the short run and show the Writers Guild of America (perceived as cocky after its recent ability to force agents out of the packaging business) who’s boss.
More obviously, it might secure the least costly compromise on issues like residuals payments and transparency about viewership.
But the 20,000 members of the WGA are not the only people who, having had their lives and livelihoods upended by the streaming model, want fair pay and assurances about the use of artificial intelligence, among other sticking points. The 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists share many of the writers’ concerns. And recent unforced errors by studio executives, named and anonymous, have suddenly transformed a fight the studios were spoiling for into a public relations war they cannot win.
Even as SAG-AFTRA representatives were seeing a majority of their demands rejected despite a nearly unanimous strike vote, a Deadline story quoted unnamed executives detailing a strategy to bleed striking writers until they come crawling back.
Days later, when an actors’ strike seemed imminent, Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger took time away from the Sun Valley Conference in Idaho not to offer compromise but to lecture. He told CNBC’s David Faber that the unions’ refusal to help out the studios by taking a lesser deal is “very disturbing to me.”
“There’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic,” Iger said. “And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”
If Iger thought his attempt to exec-splain the situation would make actors think twice about walking out, he was very much mistaken. Instead, he handed SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher the perfect opportunity for the kind of speech usually shouted atop the barricades.
“We are the victims here,” she said Thursday, marking the start of the actors’ strike. “We are being victimized by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us. I cannot believe it, quite frankly: How far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right, when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment.”
Cue the cascading strings of “Les Mis,” bolstered by images of the most famous people on the planet walking out in solidarity: the cast of “Oppenheimer” leaving the film’s London premiere; the writers and cast of “The X-Files” reuniting on the picket line.
A few days later, Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive of IAC and Expedia Group and a former Hollywood studio chief, suggested that studio executives and top-earning actors take a 25% pay cut to bring a quick end to the strikes and help prevent “the collapse of the entire industry.”
When Diller is telling executives to take a pay cut to avoid destroying their industry, it is no longer a strike, or even two strikes. It is a last-ditch attempt to prevent le déluge.
Yes, during the 2007-08 writers’ strike, picketers yelled noncomplimentary things at executives as they entered their respective lots. (“What you earnin’, Chernin?” was popular at Fox, where Peter Chernin was chairman and chief executive.) But that was before social media made everything more immediate, incendiary and personal. (Even if they have never seen a movie or TV show, one would think that people heading up media companies would understand how media actually work.)
Even at the most heated moments of the last writers’ strike, executives like Chernin and Iger were seen as people who could be reasoned with — in part because most of the executives were running studios, not conglomerations, but mostly because the pay gap between executives and workers, in Hollywood and across the country, had not yet widened to the reprehensible chasm it has since.
Now, the massive eight- and nine-figure salaries of studio heads alongside photos of pitiably small residual checks are paraded across legacy and social media like historical illustrations of monarchs growing fat as their people starve. Proof that, no matter how loudly the studios claim otherwise, there is plenty of money to go around.
Topping that list is Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive Davd Zaslav. Having re-named HBO Max just Max and made cuts to the beloved Turner Classic Movies, among other unpopular moves, Zaslav has become a symbol of the cold-hearted, highly compensated executive that the writers and actors are railing against.
The ferocious criticism of individual executives’ salaries has placed Hollywood’s labor conflict at the center of the conversation about growing wealth disparities in the U.S., which stokes, if not causes, much of this country’s political divisions. It also strengthens the solidarity among the WGA and SAG-AFTRA and with other groups, from hotel workers to UPS employees, in the midst of disputes during what’s been called a “hot labor summer.”
Unfortunately, the heightened antagonism between studio executives and union members also appears to leave little room for the kind of one-on-one negotiation that helped end the 2007-08 writers’ strike. Iger’s provocative statement, and the backlash it provoked, would seem to eliminate him as a potential elder statesman who could work with both sides to help broker a deal.
Absent Diller and his “cut your damn salaries” plan, there are few Hollywood figures with the kind of experience, reputation and relationships to fill the vacuum.
At this point, the only real solution has been offered by actor Mark Ruffalo, who recently suggested that workers seize the means of production by getting back into the indie business, which is difficult to imagine and not much help for those working in television.
It’s the AMPTP that needs to heed Iger’s admonishment. At a time when the entertainment industry is going through so much disruption, two strikes is the last thing anyone needs, especially when the solution is so simple. If the studios don’t want a full-blown revolution on their hands, they’d be smart to give members of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA contracts they can live with."
#sag-aftra strike#sag strike#fans4wga#writers guild strike#actors guild strike#union solidarity#wga strong#i stand with the wga#wga strike#writers strike
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writing cheats
i know i’ve probably written about these all individually but i’m putting them together in one post. these are writing tricks that are extremely cheap and dirty; when you use them it feels like cheating and honestly by posting them i’m probably exposing all the easy moves in my own work, but more than a writer i am a teacher, so here you go, some writing cheats that have never steered me wrong.
quick character creation
what’s really annoying is when you have two characters sitting at a restaurant or something and the server has to come by. to what degree do you describe the server so that it’s clear they’re just a background character but that they’re not just a faceless form, so that the world has texture without taking up too much space on the page? rule of three, babeyyy: two normal things and a weird one.
she had pale skin and blue eyes but her hair was dyed black like a 2010 emo kid.
he was tall and broad, and he wore a sweatshirt with an embroidered teddy bear on it.
the woman stood there comparing the prices of toilet paper. she had a short angled bob and carried a keychain the length of a trout.
why does it work? it gives the reader something to hang onto, a brief observation that shows the world exists around your narrator. it also works when introducing main characters, but there’s so much action going on that you can’t take time to write a rich long paragraph about them. all you need is a little hook.
quick setting creation
i used to TOIL over descriptive paragraphs. for years i was like, description is my weakness, i must become better at developing imagery. i believed this because a famous writer once projected a paragraph i had written onto a screen and asked my cohort, “count how many images are crafted in this paragraph.” there were none. none! my friends were sitting there like, “we are TRYING” but they couldn’t find any.
i would say that after years of studying imagery development at the sentence level, i am, perhaps, competent at it, but what was more helpful was for me to shrug and tell myself, “i’m just not a writer who does that.”
anyway. my cheat is thus:
there’s not much you can assume about your audience. the audience is not a homogenous whole. but your ideal audience is something you can guess at, and that means you can play around with their existing knowledge and expectations.
if you say your characters are in a tacky shit-on-the-walls restaurant, if your ideal reader is an american who went to restaurants during the maximalist era of franchise design, they will conjure their nearest memory of one of those places. and for those readers who aren’t familiar with it, they’ll use other context clues to conjure that space. the point is, you don’t have to list every single stupid license plate nailed to the wall. you can leave it as one detail of one sentence and let your reader extrapolate from there.
if i say the dentist’s office looked like a gutted 90s taco bell, maybe no ideal audience would have ever seen a place like that, but a lot of people can mentally conjure a dentist’s office and a 90s taco bell and overlay them together to create a weird and fun image.
you can go even simpler than that: a bathroom the size of an airplane lavatory. a tiny studio apartment with a hotplate instead of a stove. a mansion with a winding stairwell. the point is that you want to define the size of the space and its general vibes.
in some ways detailed description can be overrated, because your reader conjures images even in absence of them on the page. and for those readers who can’t mentally conjure images, it doesn’t matter anyway; they take you at your word. the trick is to figure out what details are unexpected, relevant to understanding the story and its characters, and those are the things that you add in.
one other note: after working with hundreds of writers on drafting, for *most* of us it’s difficult to develop images and establish setting in a first draft. it’s nearly always something to be saved for a second or later draft. i think it’s because while we’re writing we tend to put character and action first.
nail the landing
there’s a joke i heard once from a writer i really admire: “you know it’s literary fiction if the story ends with a character looking at a body of water.”
and god it’s so painfully sad and true how easy it is to nail the landing of a given story by ending on a totally irrelevant piece of imagery. the final beat of a story followed by your character looking up at the sky and seeing a flock of birds in the shape of a V flying past. or maybe they’re sitting in their car and they count the rings of a nearby church bell. or maybe they watch an elderly couple walk down the sidewalk hand-in-hand. i don’t know!! when in doubt shove an observation, an image, whatever, something neutral at the end and it’ll sound profound.
(this cheat is the only one that can really bite you in the ass because if the image is too irrelevant you risk tonal incongruity. for use only in the most desperate of times.)
sentence fragments
when writers ask me how to punch up their writing or start developing their own style, my go-to advice is to give up the idea of a complete sentence. fuck noun-verb-object. if you have a series of character actions, knock off the sentence subjects like in script action. if the clause at the end of your sentence is particularly meaningful, don’t separate it with a comma but a period and make it its own thing. if your character is going through something particularly stressful or heinous, that bitch is not thinking in complete thoughts so you don’t have to convey them that way. make punctuation bend to your will!!
rhetorical moves
this one opened a lot of doors for me stylistically. remember that famous writer who called me out on my lack of imagery? i always thought his prose was beautiful, that he’s one of the best living prose writers, etc. once i learned more about rhetoric though, i realized he just employed it a lot.
usually when we talk about beautiful sentences it means a sentence that uses rhetorical devices. the greeks were like, you know what, when we give speeches there are certain ways to phrase things that make the audience go nuts. let’s identify what those things are and give them names so we can use them intentionally and convince people of our opinions.
i love shakespeare, i really do, but one of the big reasons he’s still a household name today and his plays are still performed is because every sentence of every goddamn play utilizes a rhetorical device. the audience is hard-wired to vibrate at the sound and cadence of his writing, like finding the spot on a dog that makes their foot thump. for five hundred years, william shakespeare has been scritching that spot for us.
i have no idea why, cognitively, rhetorical devices are so effective. i’m no rhetorician. all i know is that well-deployed anaphora makes a reader want to throw their panties on stage. my intro to rhetorical devices was the wonderful book the elements of eloquence by mark forsyth, a surprisingly fun read! hopefully that will open some doors for you the way it did for me.
the downside to this is that once you know rhetorical devices, it’s like learning how the sausage is made. on one hand, as a writer, you’ll have a lot stronger grasp of style, but as a reader good prose loses some of its magic.
pacing it out
many writers, myself included, rely on the tried and true “he bit the inside of his cheek” or other some such random action to help pace out dialogue. one time my thesis advisor sat me down and said “you’ve got to take all of those out.”
“all of them?” i said.
“all of them,” she said.
i thought, but that will weaken the text! it didn’t. once i cut what i came to call cheek-biter sentences i never went back. and now when i edit for other people i’m like, look i know where you’re coming from but just cut all these out and see how the scene stands. if it doesn’t feel right you can put some back in. a lot of times when you’re drafting you put those in the way some people say “um.” they’re just sentences you jot while you’re thinking of what the other character says, so from a writing perspective it seems like you’re pacing, but readers don’t read it that way. they just want to get to the next line of dialogue.
but sometimes you really do need to pace out a scene and i think there are other ways to do that that don’t rely on banal physical movements, such as:
interiority: a sentence or paragraph of relevant cognition, bonus points if you weave in background context. good interiority defines the voice of your writing.
observations: i know i just said description is overrated but idk sometimes you just need a character to note the back and forth clacking of one of those desk ball toy things.
character texture: maybe your character notes something about the person they’re talking to. a wilted pocket square. a mole that looks like it needs looked at by a dermatologist. a scar on their forehead. some detail that deepens or complicates our understanding of a character.
narratorial consciousness and access
this one is less a cheat and more a problematic opinion i have that doesn’t win me any popularity in writing circles.
i believe that if you’re writing in first person or close third or any narration which is dedicated to the mind of one character, you are only ever obligated to convey the experience of that character’s consciousness. and nothing else.
by that i mean, if your point of view character is unobservant? then they’re not going to even notice the flight attendant is missing one of their canine teeth. if your pov character is focused and obsessive, they’re going to think lavish, detailed paragraphs about that which they’re obsessed with and have no acknowledgement of the rest of the world. if your pov character has no understanding of time, does your story even need to be linear?
defining the scope of a narrator’s cognition early on can give you parameters in which to work. even if you don’t consciously do this, you still do it. if you write in third person limited present tense without really thinking about it, that’s your scope. i’m just pointing out you can choose to do it differently. you get to define your narrator.
whenever we talk about narration we also talk about information access and the order of information being revealed/conveyed. writing must always be in order; even if you’re writing multiple concurring things, it still has to be rendered on the page in order one after the next, because the human mind can’t read two sentences over top of one another.
if we’re restricted to the mind of a character, that means we’re also restricted by their knowledge and experiences, and this can be used to your benefit. i don’t want to take too much space for this but i do talk more about the relationship between narration and reality here.
in short, you the writer get to choose
what the reader knows,
in what order they know it, and
its relationship to the presumed real events of the story, which develops the (un)reliability of your narrator
okay going to cut this off now before i go on more rants about narrative scope. i hope you found this helpful and go on to put some of these nasty lifehacks in your own writing!!
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Propaganda
Josephine Baker (The Siren of the Tropics, ZouZou)— Josephine Baker was an American born actress, singer, and utter icon of the period, creating the 1920s banana skirt look. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion film. She fought in the French resistance in WWII, given a Legion of Honour, as well as refusing to perform in segregated theatres in the US. She was bisexual, a fighter, and overall an absolutely incredible woman as well as being extremely attractive.
Anne Baxter (The Ten Commandments, All About Eve)—her soft, gentle voice in "all about eve", those gentle eyes with something odd behind them, the way she flips from Sweet Innocent to Viper on a dime......there was something Built Different about anne baxter, man, and it makes her so good for playing people who are Built Wrong. also one of my favorite batmen villains (her joint episode w vincent price is a delight) and of course I'm obsessed with her columbo episode where she bosses around edith head and does fabulous movie star things for no good reason. and i would be REMISS if i didn't mention her slink—oh the slink—in the ten commandments...................pardon me i must go think of sinning again
This is round 4 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.
[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]
Josephine Baker:
Black, American-born, French dancer and singer. Phenomenal sensation, took music-halls by storm. Famous in the silent film era.
Let's talk La Revue Negre, Shuffle Along. The iconique banana outfit? But also getting a Croix de Guerre and full military honors at burial in Paris due to working with the Resistance.
She exuded sex, was a beautiful dancer, vivacious, and her silliness and humor added to her attractiveness. She looked just as good in drag too.
So I know she was more famous for other stuff than movies and her movies weren’t Hollywood but my first exposure to her was in her films so I’ve always thought of her as a film actress first and foremost. Also she was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture so I think that warrants an entry
Iconic! Just look up anything about her life. She was a fascinating woman.
Anne Baxter:
The prettiest murderer in that film. Just so beautifully evil as Nefertari.
Anne Baxter was part of my Bisexual Awakening. My family has a tradition that every Palm Sunday we watch The ten commandments on TV together... And starting from a very young age, I essentially developed a crushes on Anne Baxter's Nefertiri & Yul Brynner's Ramses. Dude, the woman was HOT! They both were! My crush definitely wasn't helped by the fact that Anne Baxter's costumes were a bit on the sheer side. She had a way of capturing you with her eyes, and I never understood why Charlton heston's Moses didn't just have a threesome with Nefertiri and Ramses. LOL
Her Nefertiri in The Ten Commandments was FORMATIVE TO ME. If not the hottest old movie lady, then she definitely played the hottest old movie character. if that makes sense.
Look. Listen. I only *just* discovered her on a post from the Have You Seen This Romcom poll blog. Saw she had the same last name as me and went OOH hi hello. Went to her IMdB and saw she was born in Indiana like moi. I am now even more intrigued. Been eagerly telling my partner this, and he was like "maybe you guys are distantly related?" And after 2 hrs of going down the tumblr tag + her imdb photos, I'm In Deep(tm) and I can't stop looking at her like 😍 When I go to my grandma's house, bet your ass I'm gonna check my grandpa's genealogy and see if we're somehow related. Sorry that's not really propaganda I just got real excited, esp when I saw that the submission deadline was extended (bless your soul). Narrowing down the movies where she's hottest in was Hell tyvm. I've only just discovered her, she looks gorgeous to me in every movie still I see of her gdi lol.
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Rant.
it always gives me whiplash when gringos call me or other latinas on radblog "Republican" and "nazis".
Because they are so sure they are making such the point about us being nazis and bringing conservative and apocalyptic takes on them because we don't want men in females spaces, and yet from our perspective, they are still thousands of people all across latam who simply dissapeared when the north american goverment decided to interfiere in latam's politics which lead to real, actual genocides based on politic stance. Specifically being leftist.
My country in particular had one of the most brutal dictatorships in latam. Over 40.000 people were killed, tortured or simply dissapeared just to prevent socialism, despite the socialist president at the time being chosen democatrically.
Now, women, mostly college students feminists at the time were systematically tortured. I'm not talking about internet persecution or some horrible missgender crime. I'm talking of whole brigades raping 14 to 21 year old girls. I'm talking of soldiers setting girls on fire. I'm talking about men open pregnant women to dispatch the baby. I'm talking about torture and murder.
Why? because they dared to talk about politics, because they dared to talk about contraceptives. About feminine issues. For being Left.
It was also a time where the wrong opinion could get you killed, could mean your children being killed. For being brown, for being indio, for being poor. Think of you neighbour accusing you of hearing certain music and your house being raded and your teenage children being taken to a camp to never be seen again. I'm not talking 100 years ago. I'm talking my parents and anyone who is 5 years older than me.
To this day we are extremely affraid of police and the military. The levels of poverty Latam has are hardly something people in first world countries have seen in a years, because the poverty itself has been caused for said countries and their progress. I'm talking whole neighbourhoods of houses made of cardboard while some first world country leaves a bunch of chemical wasteland just right up the corner where we live so they live better.
Two years ago there was a breakout in my country, it was quite famous. You know the first thing the police did?
They raped and hanged a girl on the street. In 2021.
And then comes some random USA/Canadian citizen and calls you "a republican" and "a nazi".
Did I mention after II world war many nazis escaped to latam and formed whole german colonies for either experimenting on humans or create pedophile nets and raping centers? the more you know.
But we are nazis, we are republicans. Despite the fact that that our indigenous people recognize women as adult human females, that indigenous women were hunted down and used historically to be bred by whites colonizers just like them. Despite the fact that most of us are mestizos, that color and class go hand in hand in latam, that we have a culture heavily based on religious intakes of what's women's place and that we shut up when the men talk, because that's macho culture. We are nazis and we are republicans, despite the fact that their fucking country killed thousands of us because we wanted to try left and to hope for something more than extreme poverty. Shit, we've even been called colonizer by some chicano who doesn't even speak spanish. I mean, what are the odds.
But the white men need to speak, the gringo has something to say, they need us to respect their pronouns and go along with their progress. So they packed their bullshit religion and ship it right down the frontera, and now we have to swallow too. Because we are latinas, we live in the backyard, right? what do we know about the experiences of american dudes in skirts.
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It's very interesting that anti-Zionists claim to be "anti-colonial" given the arguments I routinely see them use against Jews. For years, I've seen them use full scale blood quantum arguments, for one. Most recently, now that we're fully in "Jesus was a Palestinian" season again, I saw a famous economist claim that "Jesus is genetically closer to Palestinians, (particularly Christians) than to Israelis (0 connection to most groups)," which is false to begin with.
Personally, I'm very sensitive to this kind of argument because I'm a ger. These people go after Jews like us very hard because to them we have the wrong DNA and thus undermine Jewish indigeneity, peoplehood, and history. Even if they concede the genetic evidence of born Jews' ancestral origins, they still point at gerim and any of our descendants as the "fake Jews" who don't belong… anywhere, actually. We don't belong in Israel because we're "foreign interlopers," and we don't belong outside of Israel because we had the gall to become Jews.
It's one type of antisemitism I can't seem to numb myself toward.
Hi Nonnie! Thank you for the ask, and my apologies about how long it's taking me to reply these days. Real life is not currently kind... :(
Okay, I had to roll my eyes so hard at that propaganda lie about Jesus. (found the economist in question, love it when someone who is living as a colonizer on stolen Native American land, has the audacity to goysplain a Jewish man to Jews, who support Jewish native rights. There really is no end to how much Jews just don't count to such people, is there?)
And it really is remarkable how many things he could get wrong in just that one part of his tweet...
Jesus was not a Palestinian, he was a Jew.
If you traveled back in time, and wanted to ask him about being Palestinian, you wouldn't be able to speak to Jesus in Arabic, which is the language of the Palestinians as Arabs, you would have to speak to him in either Hebrew or Aramaic (which is so close to ancient Hebrew, that I can speak some Aramaic simply by virtue of being a native Hebrew speaker) for him to understand you. Because he was a Jew.
If you did speak to Jesus in Hebrew or Aramaic, and asked him about being Palestinian, he wouldn't know what you're talking about, because the Romans would only rename the land Provincia Syria Palaestina in 136 AD, over 100 years after his death. Calling Jesus Palestinian is like saying that Chief Powhatan (probably best known as Pocahontas' father) was a Virginian, just because he was born and lived on territory that would later become Virginia. It's anachronistic, blatantly untrue, and totally imposing colonialist inventions on native people.
To the best of my knowledge NO ONE has dug up Jesus' DNA to compare it to ANY group. This is how you can tell that when he gets to that part, this guy is just blatantly making propaganda up.
Israelis are not one group, but Israeli Jews do test close to other Middle Eastern groups, and closest to other Jewish groups from around the world.
I guess, why settle for one bit of bullshit, when you can go for five?
I find it so interesting that you used the term "blood quantum." For non-Americans, who may not know it, here's a short introduction:
A person's Blood Quantum is the fraction of their ancestors, out of their total ancestors, who are documented as full-blood Native Americans. The blood quantum policy was first implemented by the federal government within tribes to limit native citizenship. However, since 1934, tribes were granted the authority/ability to create their own enrollment qualifications.
I find it interesting, because I keep thinking Jews and First Nations have so much in common, as native peoples. I remember coming across at least two different stories of people being adopted into Native American tribes. Obviously, each first nation has its own rules about it, before and after the colonization of America, but the point is... there is room for someone to become a member of the tribe, not based on blood. Most of the time, membership of the tribe IS based on ancestry, but it isn't limited to that. Some people come and live with the tribe, adopt its customs and way of life, emerge themselves in the values and heritage, embrace its spiritual beliefs, become a member of this community, and then they are adopted in. It's the same with Jews. Most of us are born Jewish, some of us choose to live this lifestyle, embrace the customs, beliefs and culture, go to synagogue, get to know the community, and eventually adopt and are adopted by it. That's the thing. Converting to Judaism isn't just changing your belief system. It's joining a tribe, and changing one's identity through this process of mutual adoption. Converts to Judaism don't take away ANYTHING from the native rights of Jews. On the contrary, this process of conversion is so different to when someone moves from one religion to another (think of how much simpler baptism is, to the long journey of converting to Judaism), precisely because Judaism isn't just a religion, unlike Christianity and Islam. It is an entire, intricate identity that combines multiple aspects, as all ancient, native identities do.
And in this context, think of Americans who are mostly of European descent, and have nothing to do with Native American culture, or way of life, but they can point to having an "exotic" great great great grandfather, who was a Native American chief. From what I've gathered, they would not be considered members of the tribe by most Native American nations. But the person who lives with the tribe, and shares its ways and its fate? That person is recognized as such by the tribe members.
Jews are the same. We are not native just because our ancestors are from Israel. We are also native, because we are the people who have preserved that Israelite identity. We have carried its torch, and passed it on along the generations, and we have shared our light with those, who chose to stand with us, to share our ways, our fate, and the consequences of the horrible hatred aimed at us.
I love you, my fellow tribe member. Thank you for sharing the light, and the burden, together! *sending so much love* xoxox
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
#israel#antisemitism#israeli#israel news#israel under attack#israel under fire#israelunderattack#terrorism#anti terrorism#hamas#antisemitic#antisemites#jews#jew#judaism#jumblr#frumblr#jewish#ask#anon ask
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LO Art Analysis (or: A Real Example of Why You Shouldn't Use Multiply for Everything)
I've obviously been spending a lot of time recreating LO art and in that time, I think I've really cracked open some of modern LO's problems with its art. This is a lengthy post so turn on some lo-fi, grab some popcorn and strap in.
One thing in particular that I'm very eager to talk about (and go off about) is Rachel's use of color language and shading.
THERE WILL BE BRIEF FASTPASS PANELS AHEAD IN THIS ANALYSIS. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
One of the key things that most people seem to agree on when it comes to LO's current art quality is the lack of color language. Back in S1, we had colors that seemed to jump off the page, with gorgeous rendering that created panels that were vast and beautiful to take in. It didn't matter if the anatomy was wonky or if the backgrounds were translated directly from Google Sketchup, the color and compositions made up for its flaws and created unique vignettes that individually contributed to what we found so special about LO back in those days.
That last one especially is still hands-down one of the most well-known and influential LO panels out of the entire series. Many a phone background its graced (my own included, I've literally had this as my phone background for like 3 years now) and it serves as a beautiful standalone example of the mood and emotions LO used to convey. You don't need to know the context of the scene, you don't need to know the characters, the mere posing and color choice alone is enough to invoke a reaction from the viewer. It doesn't even have a lot of shading or final rendering, the composition and texturing is all it needs.
So why does a simple panel like that work, but panels like these don't?
I have such beef with this panel because it does the complete opposite of what the famous Tower 4 panel achieves - it puts on full display everything wrong with LO's current art style, from its character posing to its color language aaaall the way to its final rendering.
First off, the character posing and framing. I finally figured out what RS' male characters have been suffering from lately, and it's a phenomenon that I'm sure many of you will be able to recognize right away.
Seth Macfarlane Syndrome.
You might not watch Family Guy, you might not watch American Dad, or the Cleveland Show, but you'll know exactly what I mean when I talk about Seth MacFarlane Syndrome. It's the stiffness, the lack of movement or bend in joints, the boring posing of characters standing with their arms flatly at their sides and their entire body facing the same direction, eyes unblinking - and when they speak, heads slightly tilting, mouths always being conformed to the same default shapes, while the arms do something random and unrelated to create the illusion of natural movement.
This has been an issue in LO for a while now, incredibly flat posing that lacks any sort of dynamic curvature to it, but it's best exemplified by that Ares panel above because holy shit does he ever look like Stan Smith in it. Boxy shoulders with arms that appear to be WAY too short hanging off the side, elbows flattened, hands straightened out, no natural shaping whatsoever.
But that's not the crux of the issue I want to touch on today.
No, the worst offense of this panel is that it indirectly proves what I've been suspicious of for a while now.
To explain real quick for context, there's this thing in digital art called Blend Modes. It's essentially a basic function in digital art that allows you to change the properties of layers for the purpose of shading, rendering, whatever have you. Most of these Blend Modes are the same across all digital art programs, things like Multiply, Screen, Color Dodge, etc. are all fairly basic tools in the digital artist's toolkit but all have an INCREDIBLY high ceiling of mastery - meaning, blend modes are easy to use on a basic level, but require a lot of skill and understanding of color language to utilize to their full potential. Using them right can transform a passable piece of work into a great one - on the flipside, using them wrong can take a passable piece of work and piss all over it.
The one I want to focus on in this post is Multiply. I use this blend mode myself quite often, it basically 'multiplies' the properties of the layers below it, taking whatever colors are below and 'doubling' them to create darker tones. This makes it a go-to for shading.
But the issue with Multiply is that it often ends up being used when it's not supposed to be. Or rather, people starting out will often use it as a substitute for shading when you'd be better off using your own hand-picked colors. I've got characters with skin tones that I can shade with the same color set to Multiply, zero issues, because the base tone is one that doubles well, it creates a nice rich tone on top that's perfect for shading.
But do you know the one color that DOESN'T multiply well?
Yellow.
Yellow is NOT a color you can just multiply, not without the final result looking flat and almost putrid. Most people will thus recommend you shade yellow with other colors along the same side of the color wheel, including oranges and reds. This is precisely why knowing color theory is such an important skill even in digital art, because using Blend Modes improperly can create flat tones that can ruin a final composition.
Going back to that Ares panel...
Again, I've had this suspicion for a while, especially when looking at panels of Persephone (*pink is ALSO a color that doesn't multiply well)
So I put it to the test. I took the original panel, sampled the yellow, and overlaid it with Multiply to see what I'd get.
Fam.
That putrid deep yellow that I mixed above is literally NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS WITH WHAT I EYEDROPPED FROM THE PANEL. Copy and paste that and eyedrop it yourself if you want to see it with your own eyes. It's pretty obvious she did the same thing with Hera as well, you can tell her skin tone has been set to multiply and repainted with the same color, same as with her jacket.
They are using Multiply layers for everything as the default. This is not how Multiply is intended to be used - it's lazy shortcutting that's resulting in flat, boring, ugly compositions.
RS has stated herself that she 'changed' how LO is drawn to help 'streamline' the process for her assistants. This isn't streamlining. This is cutting corners.
Streamlining would be having color palettes to refer to during the coloring and shading process. I use them myself for characters that I CAN'T multiply-shade, I literally have characters whose skin tones are too light and yellow-toned for it - using Multiply would wash out their tones and make them look flat and sickly so I have to use a separate color from a different part of the color wheel to shade them (usually a darker tone of red/orange).
Rachel, babe, this isn't streamlining, this is just taking shortcuts to the point of sabotaging your own work. You can't sit there and tell me THAT looks good and is worth the 'streamlining' when panels like THESE used to exist:
Turn off the Multiply layers and color your characters for once, please, I'm begging you. This is such a rookie move for someone who claims to be a professional (and regularly brags about the awards she's won); not to mention a tragic fall from grace because we know Rachel can and has produced better work than this in the past. She knows color language, she knows how to paint, so why is she resorting to shortcuts like this? She has an entire team of people and yet she's still consistently behind enough in her buffer - or just doesn't care enough anymore - that she's resorting to lazy amateur tactics like using Multiply for everything.
And on the off chance that she ever sees this, Rachel, it's not even that hard to use proper colors. You've done it before, you should already have the color palettes available to you.
(P.S. One handy-dandy experiment to tell if your Multiply layers are failing you is the desaturation test. You'll notice that drawings being made primarily with Multiply layers will look a lot 'flatter' when desaturated, because the shading is just the same color on top of itself and 'doubled', there isn't any actual value or depth in the shading itself. These are the exact same panels I showed before, RS' on the left and mine on the right, they've just been desaturated to show the difference that proper color choice can make when defining values and tones in shading!)
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For an American with an internet connection, I manage to grow up with some pretty big gaps in my pop cultural awareness, and one of those was DC superheroes (Marvel too, until the MCU became a thing when I was in high school)
Like, I was aware that Superman and Batman are characters, and even that they live in the cities of Metropolis and Gotham. I just always assumed that those were fictional analogues for New York City and Chicago, respectively. (As the two Big US Cities, and I guess as a kid I thought Chicago was really dark and gloomy? which visiting it as an adult hasn't really been my experience but w/e).
But last month i got into batfam fanfic and learned that no, NYC and Chicago totally exist in the DC universe, and Metropolis and Gotham (plus a bunch of others with boring names) are entirely fictional with no real world geographic counterpart. Also I was entirely wrong about their approximate locations.
Gotham is in New Jersey, which, sure, explains why it's so cursed.
But Metropolis? IT'S IN FUCKING DELAWARE
most famous on here for tumblr collectively refusing to believe it's a real state?!?!
IRL it's mostly relevant as a corporate tax shelter!
I just can't wrap my head around the concept of Delaware having any important cities. IRL its biggest town is Wilmington, population just under 70k. Which, like, not tiny, but still smaller than every city i've ever lived in. (It's basically a surburb of Philly that just happens to be across the state border.)
Placing Metropolis in Delaware automatically downgrades it in my mind from "important enough city to be the stage for alien invasions" to "what the fuck is Lex Luthor doing there, why doesn't he take the tax break and put his HQ in a real city like a normal billionaire"
#batman#superman#geography#actually idk if there's any alien invasions in metropolis#i know there's alien invasions in some Superman movies but i suppose they could be happening somewhere else#i've seen the 1978 movie and THAT sure made metropolis seem NYC-like. but there wasn't an alien invasion i don't think#unless you count Superman himself. which i don't. he's very polite#MCU had the good sense to set its alien invasion in NYC. of course aliens want to invade NYC
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Hello! I don't know if this would be appropriate, but is there any good AU where Inu is a playboy, a womanizer at first? I just like this kind of trop 😅 But I'm new in this fandom and don't know any yet.
Hi anon, and welcome to the fandom! Don't worry, there's no shame in liking a certain trope. The Inukag Archive is a judgement-free zone!
Playboy!Inuyasha was a pretty popular trope on FF.net at one time, so we were able to find a decent amount of stories for you. Hope you find something you enjoy below!
Happiness by @witchygirl99 (M)
Inuyasha is an unobservant rich bastard. He has an OCD assistant and a perverted financial planner. Enter Kagome, a woman who has her own rules on how to live. He wants sex. She wants happiness. Well, that's only what they'll admit...
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A deal with a demon by @ajoy3fanfics (M)
In order to save her family's shrine from debt, Kagome reluctantly agrees to marry Inuyasha, the wealthy son of her grandfathers late friend. Inuyasha is far from thrilled about the match. According to his fathers will, he must marry if he wishes to gain his inheritance. Is this couple doomed from the start, or can they manage to find wedded bliss?
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Aesthetic by Autumn Dragon (T)
I was cocky, gorgeous, and one of Japan's Most Wanted bachelors. At first, all I wanted was to get into her pants. Now, even I have to admit that she was different from the others. Very different. Damn, I love a challenge.
Sequel: Houdini's Affair (T)
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Break Me by ShadowBluebell (M)
It was a simple trip to the store. Saving a playboy's life from a hit-and-run had been a bonus. No big deal. Until said playboy shows up at her door, intent on showing his appreciation… in his own way. Let the game of seduction begin.
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A Little Dessert by @witchygirl99 (M)
Kagome is a waitress who always looks after Inuyasha's table. Inuyasha is a player with a new girl every week. He likes the restaurant and the service Kagome gives. Secretly? He doesn't really come for the dessert, unless you think of it that way.
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The Bet by Mesmerizing Love (M)
He is a player. He always thought that girls were toys that are used for only one thing. Until he met a virgin who he desperately wanted to break, so he made a bet that he would, but she was so hard to break and he never realized that he actually would fall in love instead…
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Cheaters by @inunanna (T)
Everyone in the office knew Kagome and Inuyasha were having a not-so-secret affair. They weren't EXACTLY wrong... (Not a cheating fic)
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If It Hadn't Been For Love by Reckless Dreamer Yuna (M)
Inuyasha? He's a player. A damn good one at that. But one girl he can't break through to, is Kagome. But it's not easy, trying to bed her, while trying not to fall in love with her. What will happen if he gets his heart broken again?
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Dead Famous by Torenza (M)
The most wanted prize bachelor is up for grabs... but the one who gets him is the only one who doesn’t want to keep him...
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Til Death Do Us Part by Jade Catseye (M)
Kagome hates Inuyasha. Inuyasha hates Kagome. What happens when the sexy playboy and fiery schoolgirl are forced to undergo holy matrimony?
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A Southern Cinderella by DeletedAccountNotChangingMind (T)
Who cares if he partied a little, why should his parents not like that he liked women, so he partied, had sex, and races fast cars, why should he be punished for doing so. And why should he have to be sent to a farm to gain 'work ethic? Honestly?
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Broken Hearts by Jezzie Lynn (M)
Inuyasha is a cruel playboy. Kagome gave him a chance and they stay together. But Kagome gets raped and finds she's pregnant. Who is the father? And is someone trying to kill her and her friends?
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The Life of a Devil by SnowShadowuser (T)
Kagome, an assassin, finds out that she has only two months to live thanks to a mysterious and deadly virus...willingly, she takes on her last job; to find and to kill the notorious playboy, known as the American secret agent - Inuyasha...
--
A Player's Heart Recast by inukag-lover1600 (T)
If you fell in love with a 'womanizer' what are you to do? Simple. Just change him. InuxKag MirxSan KouxAya
#inukag archive#inukag fanfic#inukag fanfiction#playboy Inuyasha#as always feel free to add any other recs you might have
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What Kind of Future
Summary: You reflect on your relationship with Christian and wonder where it all went wrong.
Warning: All the angst bc I'm sad, heartbreak if that counts as a warning
Word Count: 3.3K
A/N: This was inspired by the song "What Kind of Future" by Woozi. Even though the song is in Korean, I would HIGHLY recommend you read the English translation bc it's honestly just pure poetry. This is lowkey me projecting my own heartbreak into my writing and honestly it physically pained me to write this so now I've decided to make all of you sad too okay sorry bye
"What kind of future is to come before us?
Even if the Heavens don't give us an answer
Until the end, I'm too stupid
So I don't know the answer."
You were cleaning your apartment, getting ready for the move. London had been an incredible adventure, and you couldn't have asked for a better experience. But sadly, you knew that your time in the beautiful city was coming to an end.
As you packed, you stumbled across a box, hidden deep in your closet. You had put away almost 2 years ago, completely forgetting about its existence. You knew what it was, which was exactly why you'd put it away in the first place. You wanted to suppress those memories as best as you could. But in the spirit of letting go and moving on, you decided to open it regardless of what you knew would follow. And as you opened box, all the memories came flooding back to you.
You had been studying at a café with your roommate (Y/R/N) when your other friend Y/F/N came over to you, followed by a man you'd never seen before. Your two friends had accidentally swapped notebooks, so you'd agreed to meet at the café. The man with Y/F/N looked around awkwardly as she greeted you excitedly, clearly indicating that she'd dragged the poor guy along.
"Y/N, Y/R/M! This is Christian, the American on the team I'd been telling you about!" Y/F/N exclaimed as the two girls swapped notebooks.
Y/F/N was doing her internship as a photographer for Chelsea FC. Due to the nature of her work, she'd gotten pretty close with the players. You felt like you knew them personally based on how much she talked about them.
But the player she seemed to talk about most was Christian Pulisic, the American hero of football. The two of you had that in common; just two Americans who made the big move to London to chase their dreams. The moment she met Christian, she knew that the two of you would get along swimmingly. And when he offered to give her a ride to practice that morning, she jumped at the opportunity to introduce you.
"Hey, I'm Christian. It's nice to meet you," he said kindly.
Christian was beautiful. Of course you knew that. You'd been to several Chelsea games to support your friend, and he was always the one to catch your eye. You secretly admired him from afar, too shy to actually approach him first.
"Christian. Aren't you the one who spilled a coffee onto her shirt?" you asked teasingly, referring to the instance when Christian completely drenched Y/F/N's shirt in coffee on her first day. Even though her shirt was ruined, she'd called you afterwards to excitedly tell you about how she'd met the famous Christian Pulisic.
Christian flushed in embarrassment, attempting to hide behind the photographer. He'd seen around, and he always thought you were the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. The sunlight shone through the window of the café, making you glow like an angel. You'd taken his breath away before ever speaking to him, and this was not how he wanted his first impression to go.
"It's okay, I'm pretty clumsy too. Plus I'm sure Y/F/N did something to deserve it in the end," you smirked, making Christian chuckle.
"Wow," Y/F/N scoffed. "I've been trying to hype up this friendship for weeks and suddenly I regret my life choices. I didn't come here to be slandered so now we're leaving before you can start ganging up on me. Come on, Christian. We've gotta get you to practice."
He waved awkwardly before following Y/F/N. But not before making eye contact with you, making you blush lightly.
You returned to your studying, but you found it hard to concentrate with the soft chuckle of the American boy still ringing in your eyes.
"He was cute," you said absentmindedly, turning a page in your textbook.
Y/R/N smirked at you knowingly.
"Oh come on! I just said he was cute," you said defensively, trying to ignore the butterflies that began to form in your stomach. "It's not like anything is gonna come of it."
You took a deep breath as you stared at one of the polaroids you and Christian had taken together. Oh, how naïve you were. Those words couldn't have been more wrong. By the year's end, Christian would become one of the most important people in your life. Y/N of the past would've laughed in your face at the thought, but she was unaware of the reality that was yet to come.
You and Christian were sat on the sofa in your living room watching Tangled together. The two of you hit it off, just as Y/F/N suspected. After that day in the café, you found yourself wanting to get to know Christian and spend as much time with him as possible. Although your schedules were busy, him with practice and you with school, you always made time for each other. The more you got to know him, the more you started to really like him.
Honestly, it confused you. You had crushes in the past, but Christian was truly something different, and you couldn't say you'd felt this way before. For weeks you contemplated your feelings, wanting to make sure that Christian was someone you genuinely wanted to let into your heart. And as your friendship developed even deeper, you thought to yourself, 'Wow. I could really fall in love with this man if I let myself.'
You hadn't been feeling so well and Y/R/N had already made plans with her boyfriend, leaving you alone in the apartment. The moment you mentioned it to Christian, he'd rushed over, snacks in hand for a movie night. He didn't hesitate despite knowing that he had an early morning practice the next day. To him, that didn't matter. What mattered most was knowing that you were okay.
And so it was just the two of you hanging out and cuddling on your couch, enjoying each other's presence. The warmth radiating off Christian made you feel the slightest bit better, and you were more than happy to be so close to him. It melted your heart to know how much he cared about you, making it even harder for you not to fall for him.
As the movie progressed, you felt Christian reach for your hand, hesitating a bit. He carefully intertwined your fingers together, not wanting to make you uncomfortable and unsure if you would pull away. You only blushed and tightened his grip in yours, cuddling into him more. He let out a sigh of relief as he held you closer to him.
And with the feeling of his hand in yours, you'd made up your mind in that moment. You would let yourself fall for Christian Pulisic. You couldn't really explain it, but something in your heart told you that he would be worth letting in. So you decided to trust in your heart, fully embracing the fact that you genuinely wanted something more with Christian.
"Are you feeling any better?" he asked you once the movie ended, sitting up.
"Kind of," you responded, also sitting up slightly. "My head still hurts a lot. I don't think I'm getting sick but something just feels off you know?"
Christian let go of your hand and instead placed it on your forehead, trying to feel your temperature. And as he did so, he got closer to your face. You were mere inches away from each other, the tension suddenly increasing in the room. Your eyes flickered to his lips ever so slightly, but you were afraid to make any movements. Was this your chance? Should you say something? Should you do something?
But you didn't have to do anything. Christian took the opportunity to make a move, kissing you softly. It surprised you, but you didn't push away. You just kissed him back slowly, getting lost in the moment.
One thing you never understood in movies and books was that feeling people always described when kissing someone. Butterflies, fireworks, a bomb going off in their stomachs. It just didn't make any sense to you. Kissing was just kissing. Lips just touching lips. How could something so simple cause such a reaction? How could it be the catalyst for the best love stories ever created? You just didn't understand it.
That was until it was Christian Pulisic's lips that touched yours. And suddenly, you understood what those descriptions were talking about. He wasn't your first, but it was truly the first time you'd ever felt like this about a kiss. Butterflies, fireworks, a bomb going off in your stomach. It was right here, right now, happening to you. There weren't any words in any language that could describe how that kiss made you feel, nor were there any words to describe just how one little kiss would impact your life forever.
When he pulled away, all you two could do was laugh before he kissed you again with more certainty. And from that day forward, you knew that your heart belonged to him.
Your heart felt heavy as you combed through the keepsakes you had collected from your relationship with Christian over the years. A keychain with your name on it that he found at a local shop, his favorite t-shirt, a stuffed bee his sister had given to him as a child. All symbols of how much he cared for you, how much he trusted you, how much he loved you. But you faltered when you picked out a small ring in the small pile. Your fingers ran over the initials engraved in the band gently, and you finally let the tears begin to fall.
Your head was on Christian's chest as he held you. Late night talks were always one of your favorite parts of the relationship. You could talk about anything and everything that came to your mind. There was never any judgement, and you were never afraid to be unapologetically you with Christian.
"Do you believe there's a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone?" you hesitantly asked him.
Christian gently ran his fingers through your hair as he held you a little tighter.
"Depends. What do you think?"
"I think," you started, "that loving someone means you accept them for who they are. But being in love with someone means you love them with every part of your existence. You love with the deepest depths of your soul. And you fully well know that being in love with someone means you're completely and totally vulnerable with them. If things go wrong, they could destroy you in a single instant."
You stopped before moving your head to hide your face a little.
"But being in love with someone means that regardless of what could happen in the end, you decide that the risk of getting your heart broken is worth it anyway."
"That's really deep, Y/N," he chuckled still stroking your hair, "but I totally agree. Love isn't really an emotion. It's a state of mind. And once you love someone, you give a part of yourself that you won't ever get back. But you'll always find yourself loving them no matter the outcome. Being in love is you fully surrendering yourself to that idea with no hesitation and no regrets. It's all or nothing."
You took a deep breath at his words, your heartbeat beginning to race against the thoughts in your head. You suddenly felt everything all at once, and you were afraid of what would happen if you fully admitted your thoughts to Christian.
"What's going on in that pretty little head of yours?" he asked, shifting his head to better look at you. Of course he could tell something was going on. He always knew. You only hid your face further into his chest, trying to pretend like the feelings weren't there.
"I'm afraid to say it," you answered meekly.
"Hey." He gently took your face into his hand, forcing you to look up at him. Your eyes tried to look everywhere but his, but his gaze was too strong.
"It's just me. You don't ever have to be afraid to tell me anything okay?"
You looked deeply into his eyes, all of your worries slip away. You saw nothing but love in his eyes and you just knew. You knew that no matter what happened in the future, you could do anything with Christian by your side. You knew you would be okay in the end. And you knew that it was time to accept what your heart longed for.
"I'm in love with you Christian Pulisic."
He kissed your forehead and held you even tighter.
"I'm in love with you too Y/N Y/L/N."
And as the two of you kissed underneath the moonlight peaking through the curtains, two souls intertwined to become one.
Christian wasn't your first boyfriend. Technically, he wasn't even your first love. But Christian was the first true love you'd ever had. He was the first person you could see a genuine future with. You would permanently move to live with him wherever his career took him next. You would marry him in the church of your hometown surrounded by all your friends and family. You would have a few kids together, often brainstorming ideas for names that would sound good with your new last name. You would support him throughout his football career, and even after his retirement, you would be by his side with whatever he decided to do next. And in turn, he would support you in everything you do. Life was uncertain, but Christian was that the anchor that kept you still when the world seemed to crumble around you. You wanted everything life had to offer, and you wanted it all with him.
The two of you had been arguing for weeks. Something was wrong. No matter how many times you tried to discuss things and fix it, you always seemed to be going in circles. The same arguments kept popping up, and you felt more and more frustrated as time went on. Sometimes you wondered if this relationship was even worth fighting for anymore.
"No matter what I do, it just doesn't seem to be enough for you." Christian's voice was shaking as he spoke. He wanted to fix this just as much as you did. The last thing he wanted to do was let you go. He had come over wanting to smooth things over, but all it did was escalate the situation further.
Nothing could have prepared you for what he would say next.
"And so, I think it's best if we split ways."
You felt your heart shatter. Your world was collapsing around you. Surely this was a misunderstanding right? Surely he didn't mean it.
"What?" you asked weakly.
"I can't be what you need anymore. You know that. I know that. It's not working anymore."
Your heart shattered a little more.
"God no, please don't do this Christian," you begged, tears running down your cheeks. "What can we do to fix this?"
"I'm sorry Y/N, but there's nothing we can do anymore," he shook his head. "We've tried everything, and it's just not working."
You knew he loved you. You knew this was hurting him as much as it was hurting you. Surely you could convince him to stay? Right?
"Please don't do this Christian! Please I'll do anything! I'll be better I promise just please don't say that! Give us another chance to fix it! We can still fix this! Please Christian, please!"
He looked into your eyes like he always did. But this time, there was no love. There was only pain, heartbreak, and the feeling of his soul letting go of yours.
"I'm not changing my mind about this. I'm sorry."
He decided that this was the best time for him to leave. Right before he closed the door behind him, he looked at you one final time. He knew he needed to be the strong one right now, holding your gaze for one final time. He needed to be strong in front of you because the moment he walked out that night, your world fell apart. You collapsed to the ground, holding your chest as you sobbed harder than you'd ever done before.
You'd always known heartbreak would hurt. But you finally understood why your friends were so crippled when they went through a break up. There weren't any words that could describe what you felt in the days following. The best was to say that your soul was ripping itself apart, almost as if it was trying to rewrite the very idea of you out of existence. You couldn't breathe, you couldn't eat, you couldn't sleep. Time stopped as the flow of tears seemed never ending. You only seemed to cry harder as each moment passed, the basin of your tears never running dry. Your thoughts wouldn't stop running and your body felt weak. You prayed that you would start to feel numb so you could no longer feel the pain. Emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually you were broken. And the only one who could fix it was the very one to cause it in the first place.
Christian was right. When you fall in love with someone, you give a part of yourself you'll never get back. When he walked out that night, he left with a piece of you that you didn't even know existed until it was already broken Even though you knew it hurt him too, you couldn't help but be angry with him. Why had he given up so easily? What could you have done to make him stay? Why weren't you enough for him to stay? Where did everything go wrong?
You hadn't spoken really since the break up. Christian had quickly become one of the most important people in your life. He was one of the only constants as you tried to navigate your turbulent little world.
Now you were strangers again. Part of you wished Y/F/N had never introduced you that fateful day in the café. It would've spared you the hurt you'd felt. But how could you have known such an innocent meeting would turn into a life changing event?
You knew you were never truly going to recover from this. Christian Pulisic would be synonymous with love, but also with pain. And as you moved on with your life, a part of your heart would remain in London, the memories of your relationship with it.
You wiped away the tears as best as you could and closed the lid of the box. You carefully packed it with the rest of your stuff, not wanting it to be damaged during the move. Despite what happened, it was still something you cared for, just as you still deeply cared for Christian.
It was love that brought you happiness. But it was also love that destroyed you in the end. And yet, you would do it all over again if it meant having Christian. The love that the two of you shared was more than worth the extreme pain that followed. If years of pain meant that you could have Christian even just for a little bit longer, you would endure it. Being able to call yourself his, even if just for a tiny portion of your life, was truly an honor and a blessing that you would never take for granted.
You didn't know what the future held in store for the two of you. You didn't know if you would ever see him again. You didn't know if you could even be in each other's lives anymore. And maybe you would never know the answers you so desperately searched for. But in your heart you knew that in every universe, in every lifetime, you would always choose Christian Pulisic, no matter the outcome.
Taglist: @neverinadream @pulisicsgirl @masonspulisic @lovelynikol16 @chelseagirl98 @bracedes @lizzypotter14 @notsoattractivearenti @thoseboysinblue @pianoisland
#christian pulisic#christian pulisic imagine#christian pulisic x reader#christian pulisic angst#swimmingismywholelife
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the off the clock kiss
this is a snippet from the famous dc!au that started with The Greatest Hits [read here] you don’t have to read it but a lot of things would make sense if you do.
You’ve kissed Jason Todd before so you’re not sure why you’re freaking out. It’s the same pair of lips. It’s the same guy. But it is different.
Before, when you two kissed, it was in front of everyone. Dressed up in costumes and caked in some brutal amount of mascara and concealer and foundation. In front of expensive cameras and microphones. In front of Harvey Dent, renowned director of American rom-coms.
That was work.
This? Right now?
Jason Todd with his back against your front door and you pressed up against him with your tongue in his mouth? Yeah this wasn’t work. Or, it didn’t feel like work.
He tastes like he looks. Which is a bit dangerous and something ginger or cinnamon dashed. You can’t tell which and honestly you don’t care in this very moment.
Kissing him feels like time is slowing down in the most peculiar way. You can feel time passing and you don’t want it to end. Not when you have Jason Todd pressed up against you like this. His hands on your waist, giving you soft squeezes.
You pull away first. When you do you notice he’s slow to open his eyes. And he’s got the most dumbstruck look on his face. You’ve never seen him like this before, which is why you like it so much.
You’ve proven to him wrong.
“I think I just proved my point that I can kiss with passion.” you say.
He opens his eyes filly now. Like he’s taking you in- he is actually. It’s hard to miss. He gives your a full once over. And then that signature smirk in on his face like any other time he’s about to reply with something witty.
“So you’ve been holding back on set because you want to defend my honor?” he asks in return.
You hit him over the shoulder and take a step back from him so you’re not chest to chest anymore. Though that doesn’t stop your heart from beating any more wildly than before. He’s still got his hands on you.
“I’m new to acting. I wasn’t just gonna French you in front of the camera!”
He clears his throat, “Well I wouldn’t have not liked it. But also, you should think about bringing that energy back to set.”
“Are you- is that a complaint?” you retort.
He grabs your shoulders, something you didn’t know you wanted to feel until he did it and now that he has you wanna feel it again. You try to pull yourself together for the sake of the conversation.
“Listen, hun, that was definitely not a complaint. I’m just saying maybe we dial it up when the cameras are rolling. This is the sequel after all.” he answers.
You nod you head. And then he’s letting go of you. What you’re thankful for is the sound of the music you had playing earlier in the living room that fills the background or he would’ve picked up the when you let out at the loss of his touch.
“Have you read page 79?” you ask.
Jason scoffs, “Of course. What do you take me for, a slacker?”
You do. And since you think he really hasn’t read up to that part int he script yet because it’s still early days of filming, you want to have to some fun with him. About a year ago you thought he was going to be a pain in your ass, and you were right for the most part. Now you think you’ll return the favor.
So you smile even though you lips are bit tingly from kissing him. And he smiles back at you innocently. You think to yourself he hasn’t got a clue what page 79 entails at all.
“Great then I guess you won’t mind if I ask Dent to move filming that part Monday?” you ask him.
And he’s nodding his head. Checkmate.
Jason peels himself off your door and opens it a crack. Then he turns to you “I’ve gotta head out, I’ll see you on Monday.” he says.
You nod too, “Yup. Page 79.”
“Oscar winning performance incoming I think.” he jokes.
You laugh at that as he walks himself out your door. With a quick reminder you tell him to text you when he gets home and he agrees. When you close it behind him you smile. Not at the joke. Not at you pranking him. No. At the kiss. You can’t believe you kissed him off the clock like that! And with tongue! He basically asked you to show him what passion you could bring to a make-out scene and you did, but damn.
Now you’re waiting for Monday to prove to Jason Todd once again that you can bring passion to kissing while in camera. And you are absolutely positive he doesn’t know that page 79 is a make-out scene because Jason is in the middle of a Jane Austen binge. He comes to set two hours earlier to read up to twenty pages of the script to get ready for the day and last time you checked he was around page 50.
This was going to be fun.
#dc imagine#dc fic#dc x reader#Jason todd x reader#Jason todd imagine#Jason todd fic#famous dc!au#dc#Jason todd
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I guess I’ll take this pain, instead of your name |
Part Twenty
A/n: Hello lovelies:)! Part 20 is here!! Felt like I owed you lot a quicker update after the last and it's a much longer one than usual too! It's probably my favourite so far actually, so I hope you enjoy x
| Just a brief mention- this chapter has a lot of different scenes! You'll understand more of what I mean as you read on but a lot happens! ALSO I'm nowhere near fluent in the language used in this part, I did it as a gcse and that's about it. So pls don't slew me in the replies! Thanksssss, love you lots!
Summary: In life, things changed. The boys you'd once grown up with were men now, and famous ones at that. The type that toured the world and had millions of adoring fans.
The five of you shared a shit ton of history. But you also shared a lot of mixed emotions for one of them in particular, a certain drummer.
Warnings: Thievery. (yes.) ummm, swearing's always a given, a grumpy Ross too... lots of fluff and fun though? Or bits and pieces of it at least. Oh and a little ribbing against Americans but they're alllll just stereotypes!! And I do love you lot so it's not said nastily x
Feel like a lot could go wrong with this part, pls don't hate me😅
Masterlist
—
“Alright. Start packing.”
I frowned over at the suitcase Matty had thrown onto my bed.
“For what?” I replied from where I was perched on the window seat, knees tucked up under my chin with a book in hand. It was one of the three places I’d taken to hiding in since my last outing at Delia’s a couple of days ago. Hiding seemed like the best option right now.
“Airport.” Matty told me in prompt, already having walked his way over towards my chest of drawers and begun pulling out an array of tops. He wrinkled his nose between two and then glanced at me from over his shoulder, “Why do you have two of the same fucking shirt?”
With a crease between my brow, I fixed him with a halfhearted glower. “Says you. And why are you headed to the airport?”
“We.” Matty corrected casually, flinging a pair of denim shorts onto the bed. “Why are we headed to the airport. And well, ’cause we are.” He gave me a simple shrug as though things were that easy.
“Matty…” I tried, wearily shuffling forward out of my comfortable position so that I could move closer to him. “What do you mean? Why are we going to the airport?”
“Because,” He drawled out, still riffling through the top drawer of my dresser, “Airports are where planes take off, you know, those big metal birds you see in the sky.”
“Right. Yeah. I get that.” I answered him, absolutely baffled. “But why?”
“Why what?”
I groaned and Matty flashed me a shit-eating grin, obviously pleased with himself.
“Why are we going to the airport, Matty!”
“‘Cause we’re getting on one of those metal birds.”
“Matty, we are not getting on a fucking plane.” I denied, eyes as wide as saucers whilst I hastily tried to stop him from throwing any more of my wardrobe about the room. “So stop being a div and put all my shit back.”
Matty merely rolled his eyes and ignored my complaints, only turning back to face me when he held a yellow laced thong between two fingers and catapulted it at me. I scowled and swiped the offending item from off my head.
“Matty!” I stressed, getting the ump now.
“Oh, come on. Just go with it, yeah?” He said then, looking at me with a tilted head and appeasing eyes. “I figured we could both use some time to just chill, relax even. And the only time I’ve ever felt closer to being exactly that was when we were sixteen and in Tenerife.”
I blinked back at him owlishly, not really internalising his words. “The holiday with your dad and Lou?”
Matty started nodding away at me in reply before he spun back around and headed for the sliding door that hid the rest of my clothes. “Exactly! Figured a couple days spent lounging under the Spanish sun might do us both some good.”
I gaped at his retreating back, beyond bewildered at this point.
“Are you being serious?”
“When have I ever fucking joked about a holiday, darlin'?” He quipped right back and I had to card a hand through my hair in attempt to try and wrap my head around things.
Now that I was actually messing with it I figured my hair probably needed a wash, but even so I couldn’t linger too much on that thought, not when Matty was apparently jetting off to Tenerife with a suitcase full of my clothes!
“Matty, just… please slow down, would you?” I murmured, tugging at my scalp as I glanced about my room that was in sudden disarray.
Matty pivoted on his heel to face me, a couple hangers dangling off the crook of his elbow. I shook my head and chose not to focus on that, nor the loose strands of hair that fell into my face.
“I can’t just go to Tenerife!” I told him imploringly, “Are you actually insane?”
I was met with a pinched expression and thin lipped smile, “Why not?”
I spluttered at him. “Why not?! Because I’ve got things keeping me here! Like my next check up, and my job at Delia’s! My fucking arm is still in a cast, Matty! And I still struggle to get in and out of bed most days! How the hell am I meant to get on a plane to Spain?”
Matty’s stance seemed to shift upon hearing my worries and so he dropped the bundle of clothes he held, I tried not to wince at the motion even as he trod over them to stand closer to me.
“Love, listen to me, yeah? You’ll be back in time for your next appointment, we’ll be gone a couple days max. And Delia doesn’t need you anywhere near her shop until you’re right as rain again.” His eyes were searching mine, he had a careful hand on my shoulder. “Besides the excuse about your arm is utter crap, and you are getting better. So much so in fact, that even Dr Mann reckons a bit of sun will do you some good.”
I frowned. “You spoke to Dr Mann?”
Matty gifted me lopsided smile, “‘Course I did. She even recommended a couple of sunscreens to me and insisted I buy you one of those umbrella hats to keep the sun off your giant head.”
I glared at him. “You better fucking not.”
That smile of his started to grow and his eyebrows lifted in excitement the second I realised what I’d just said. “So, is that a yes then?”
I chewed on my lower lip, gaze darting between Matty’s own ruddy brown and then swallowed thickly.
“‘Spose so.” I mumbled with only a tiny knot of anxiety welling in my stomach.
Matty grinned brightly and I couldn’t help my light chuckles when he started jumping about excitedly, looking like a Labrador that’d just been let of its lead.
“Fucking Tenerife baby, here we come!”
—
“I hate airports.”
“Ditto.”
“Is that even a thing here?”
“What, ditto?”
I hummed, eyes searching the terminal.
“Reckon so.”
“Maybe it’s one of those many American things you’ve picked up.” I teased, “Traitor to your own, you are.”
“Leave off.” Matty chuckled at me from where he was hidden under a pair of black sunglasses.
“You gonna start spelling colour wrong and try wearing pants instead of trousers now too?”
He scowled, even from behind his darkened shades I could tell, it was all in the mouth with Matty. It typically flattened and forced itself out into a sarky sort of smile whenever he wasn't very impressed.
“Ha ha, hilarious. That the best you got?” He shot back.
“Nah, could talk about your brash arrogance too, but I reckon that’s just a you thing as well as an American one.”
Matty scoffed, “Just ‘cause I own it, love, don’t make it a bad thing.”
I widened my eyes sarcastically at him in reply before glancing out over the runway.
We were currently hidden away in the First class lounge, him in a cap and shades, me in a hoodie and beanie. There weren’t too many people mulling about, though it was rather late and our flight wasn’t set to take off until just gone eleven. Currently it was only nearing a quarter past ten.
“Excited then?” Matty asked me, drawing my attention back to him.
Was I excited? I guess so, but also anxious. I was an alright flyer, mainly due to having been Matty’s main distraction during all our years spent travelling together, but after the accident everything sort of felt different. I was different.
I kept on waiting for that burst of adrenaline to kick in and bubble over, the type I often got whenever one of the guys roped me into something stupidly spontaneous, but it had yet to even spark.
I nodded at Matty though, foot tapping aimlessly away beside my carryon. “Think so, just nervous.”
“That’s meant to be my job.”
We shared a knowing smile, but then I shrugged. “Dunno, just feels strange. Think I’ll be more enthusiastic about it once we land and get to the hotel.” I paused for a second then and darted my head over in his direction, “You did book a hotel though, right?”
His eyebrows rose high up over his sunglasses just as his mouth dropped. “Oh fuck.”
My eyes widened in alarm, already moving to grab my phone so that we could start a search. But Matty’s snickering caught me just before I could. I shot him a harsh glare in retort and shoved at his shoulder when I realised he’d just been having me on.
“You’re such a dick.”
“I couldn’t not.” He snorted, face full of amusement. Though with another shove Matty relented and slung an arm across my shoulders to drag me in, “Don’t worry, I sorted it all. You’ll love it and we’ll have a sick time.”
“You better fucking hope so.”
—
The flight had been alright, a bit of turbulence to deal with as well as a whinging Matty, but other than that, it’d been fine. Customs had also been quite the breeze, seeing as we’d landed in the early hours of the morning and my semi-conversant Spanish had come in handy with one of the security officers. It was just the car ride over to where we were staying that really fucked us.
Matty had originally hired a car to pick us up from the airport but it’d cancelled on us at the very last second, and trying to get hold of a taxi driver that was willing to take us as far as we were looking to go proved to be a rather difficult task.
When we finally did though- after one bloke with a bleached goatee had practically doubled the original asking price- the journey had been bumpy enough that I’d had to fight with my suitcase in the backseat just to get a hold of my painkillers. Matty had tried to help of course, but it’d been a struggle to even breathe in the tiny cab, let alone have him move around and find them for me.
So by the time we arrived I was shot to hell and beyond thankful to escape the stupid car and its extremely boisterous owner.
“You alright?” Matty asked me quietly once he’d reluctantly paid the man, rolling his eyes at the twat when the car pulled away from the curb, muttering under his breath.
“Yeah, just wanna sit down.” I replied uncomfortably, but that was before I finally caught sight of the building we’d pulled up outside. “Fucking hell, Matty.”
When I glanced back over at him, he was wearing the biggest smirk anybody could’ve possibly mustered. “Snazzy, ey?”
Fuck snazzy. It was insane. I’d been way off when I’d asked him about the hotel booking, because he’d only gone and rented out an entire sodding villa.
“You’re mental.”
“Been calling me that a lot, as of late.” Matty noted, pursing his lips at me whilst he braced himself against his suitcase, “Bit mean if you think about it actually, seeing as I’ve done all this for us.”
My smile was soft, tired, but oh so genuine when I peered back over at him, and caught him a tad off guard when I wrapped my one good arm around his middle. “You are mental but you’re also amazing. So thank you.”
He squeezed me back, cautious of my torso when he did, before we parted ways and he gestured his head over towards the front door. “You wanna stand outside all day then or are we headed in?”
—
The villa was incredible. Honestly, it felt like something out of a dream.
We had our very own bar, pool, hot-tub, sauna and gym, even a pizza oven which resided right beside the built in fire-pit! Not that either Matty or I would be going anywhere near it, ovens back home were hard enough to handle and one with an open flame was not something we could get behind, even sober.
Speaking of being sober though, Matty had actually decided to take to it during our stay here. Alcohol wise at least… or so he claimed he’d try. But come noon our first day here and I could already tell that he was dying for a glass of wine out by the pool.
Still he didn’t, and so I simply started counting down the hours until he eventually caved.
Apparently our trip abroad hadn’t been too expected either, seeing as Ross had phoned me up the second he’d seen my instagram story and started ranting about his invitation. I’d attempted to pacify him by assuring that I hadn’t even been aware of it up until the point when Matty had come barging in the day of.
It was nice though. Getting away.
Home had just felt too confined now that I was out here. Sort of like leaving a cage you hadn’t even known you’d been trapped in.
The sun and the sea was everything I’d needed and more. It soothed my restlessness and calmed my chaotic thoughts, even dulled the ache my body was constantly in.
“Oi, fancy heading into town? Reckon we might need more than what we picked up earlier.”
Matty’s voice broke me from where I’d been sat daydreaming beside the pool, clad in a pair of short dungarees and a tee whilst I waded my legs back and forth through the water.
I glanced up at him, squinting in the afternoon sun. He frowned down at me in return.
“Don’t make me buy you one of those hats, ‘cause I swear I will.” Matty scolded as he made his way closer, tearing the cap he wore from off his head and placing it on mine instead. I wrinkled my nose but allowed the gesture, knowing the heat would only prey on me and my many medications. “And you’d best have sunscreen on too, I don’t need a bollocking at your next checkup, yeah?”
“Alright, dad. Calm down, would you? I put it on after I showered.” I told him with a roll of my eyes, extending an arm outwards so that he’d get the hint and help me up. He did, whilst pursing his lips in distaste- likely at the epithet used. “Besides, I thought I was meant to be relaxing. Ever since you woke up you’ve been on my case.”
“Oi,” Matty said, stopping me just before I could slip past him with a steady hand to my wrist. “It’s ‘cause I care, alright? I know you can take care of yourself but, I don’t know, it just helps ease my mind.”
I searched his expression, saw the honesty in his eyes and the sincerity that creased the skin of his forehead. Ultimately, I gave him a nod and released a sigh, “How far’s town then?”
—
“Ninety-five percent sure that that is the exact same bar we hid in when were sixteen and tried escaping from that one crazy fucker with the wooden tooth.”
I blinked at the sudden memory his comment brought forth and snorted at the picture my mind painted. “He only chased us because he thought you swiped an apple off his stall!”
“Oh yeah.” Matty chuckled then, nodding at the reminder as we wandered down a small street full of flavourful aromas. “Probably 'cause I did.”
A sharp laugh escaped me at his easy admission and I shook my head whilst attempting to dull my giggles.
“Don’t fucking laugh, it was your fault!” Matty blamed, though he was laughing lightly too even as I leaned into his side to steady myself.
“My fault!” I countered him, mouth open in shock at the blatant lie. “How was it my fault?”
“You said you were starving and it was a long walk back to the hotel! I had fuck all on me, and so I just pocketed it as we passed- it was in the moment!” He defended, taking my arm in his now, still smiling away.
“Oh fuck, I actually do remember that.” I agreed with a gleeful grin of my own, letting him lead us on further up the street at a sedated pace. “Hey- I did share it with you though. Had that barman grab us a knife for it too, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, just before you talked him into pouring the both of us shots.”
“What can I say?” I smirked over at him, “Even at sixteen I had a way with words.”
Matty snorted, “That or the fact he was mesmerised by your tits.”
I elbowed his side but failed in my attempt to dampen my grin, “Well, you got your shot, didn’t you? Made the journey home all the more exciting too.”
“That it did.” Matty smiled at me before he caught sight of something up ahead. “Why don’t we carry on the tradition, ey?”
And before I could even blink, he was out of my reach and walking away from me. My brow furrowed though I still wore a small smile, confused as I followed behind him, watching as he worked his way through the tiny market before us and up to the top of the street.
Matty rounded the corner in the next moment and so I quickened my pace to try and catch up. I found him leaning casually against a terracotta coloured wall, one ankle crossed over the other whilst he grinned like a sneaky little kid who had yet to be caught.
“What was that all about?” I asked, a tad out of breath now.
He simply shrugged and pulled the hand he’d been hiding behind his back into view. I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was, because there it was. Catching a ray of light from the slowly setting sun, was a bright red apple.
I could only shake my head as I laughed and hurried over to join him, stealing the fruit from his grasp and taking a massive bite out of it before he could even react.
“Thief!” He gasped dramatically and I grinned around the apple I’d just eaten, feeling more like myself than I had in a long while.
“Takes one to know one, I ‘spose.”
With a sly smile, Matty snatched the apple back and bit into it too. “Where to now then?” He prompted as he offered an arm out to me, chewing carelessly away.
“Fancy aiming any higher? Reckon there’s got to be a bank around here somewhere…”
—
“Perdón, is this seat taken?”
I heard a strong accented voice ask from right beside me and so I peered up away from the book I'd been lost in and into the eyes of a handsome stranger.
Blinking, I looked back and forth between him and the wooden chair he was pointing to. I was quick to shake my head in retort, offering it up to him.
“Adelante, es suya.” I said, and he smiled down at me politely before simply slipping into the seat. I was a little taken back by the gesture, having figured he’d only wanted the chair for a nearby table, seeing as the restaurant was growing more and more by the minute.
“Discúlpame, pensé que eras una chica inglesa.” He replied after he’d gotten comfortable at our little table in the corner. His Spanish caught me off guard for a moment and I took a second to translate his words in my own head. I had to laugh a little when I did, and he tilted his head towards me with a mirthful smile of his own. “¿Qué?”
“Lo siento,” I apologised, dog-earing my book before I reverted back to English. “It’s just that, I am English.”
His eyebrows rose and I watched as his eyes quickly trailed up and down my figure. He appeared shocked almost. “I should be the one saying sorry!” He hurried to cajole, “I- just your Spanish, it is rather good.”
I tried to fight the unexpected blush his compliment gave me, and brushed his words off. “You’re fine, I’m just glad I didn’t offend you with my pronunciation.”
“No, no. Honest. I didn’t think anything of it.” He told me, and he seemed truthful. “Forgive me, but where did you learn?”
“Oh, from a family friend.”
In truth, I’d only picked it up from one of my mum’s many boyfriends. He’d lived with us the longest and had an elderly grandmother who he visited infrequently. My mum had sent me with him a couple of times and the woman seemed to take to my added presence, she'd taught me most of what I now knew.
I’d stop in to see her once or twice a week, mostly on my way home from school, and continued to do so even after he and my mum had split. She’d been lovely, always made me feel safe and welcomed, but sadly passed away a few months before I’d had the chance to leave home.
I thought of her from time to time, mostly whenever my mind wandered to thoughts of what was after all of this. If there really was something waiting up (or down, I supposed) there for us all.
“They did an excellent job!” The stranger complimented again, and I took a moment to give him the once over. Nice smile, pretty eyes, dark hair which only complemented his olive complexion.
“Thank you.” I smiled, unable to help the small burst I pride I felt. And here I thought I’d been butchering the language this entire time!
“Of course.” And he returned the sentiment- though I silently conceded that ‘nice smile’ had been somewhat of an understatement now. “Can I ask what you are reading?”
I blinked at his question before he could catch me staring and diverted my focus over to where I’d left my book. “Oh, um, The Bell Jar?”
He hummed and went to take it.
“May I?” He asked me before he did, and I gave him the go ahead, watched as his eyes danced across the back of the novel. “What is your favourite?”
“My favourite book?”
He replied with a soft nod and I had to think it over.
“It sounds silly, but for a long time it had always been Pride and Prejudice. I stuck by it, read it a couple dozen times, watched the film again and again, even dragged my friend along to this giant garden they’d filmed it in. Then someone gifted me One Hundred Years of Solitude and I was hooked. Completely changed me. I fell in love with it, in truth.”
His eyes seemed to brighten at the sound of the second novel, though he’d seemed truly interested in hearing my reply.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude, now that one is increíble.” He divulged me, leaning in closer to be heard over the rest of the tiny restaurant with a doting smile. “My mother, she loved it too.”
I grinned at that and continued to chat with him, first about the book, then about Spain and what I thought of life here, he noticed my cast after a long while and questioned me on it just as we were stirred from our conversation.
“Alright?”
Was the word that clued me in to Matty’s sudden arrival and I glanced up, somewhat startled, to see him smirking down at me, eyes lingering momentarily on the stranger who sat knee to knee with me.
“See you’ve been quick to replace me.” He teased, waving off the man’s apology and the offering of his seat. Matty instead shook his head and slotted himself into the chair opposite us, the one I’d originally been saving for him.
“You said you’d be gone ten minutes!” I laughed in reply when I’d finally pulled myself together- already far too aware of what had probably caught his eye, or rather who.
“And I apologise! Sincerely I do, with my whole entire heart even. But what was I to do when I saw a lady in need? Not stop and offer my help?” Matty replied theatrically, always in his element when putting on a show.
I hummed and raised an inquisitive brow, unable to help my sardonic smile. “And that took you nearly an hour?”
He winced slightly in jest before he relaxed back into his seat. “What can I say, I’m very… thorough.”
I grimaced around a short laugh. “What you are is an idiot.”
Matty merely grinned and gifted me a soft shrug that couldn’t be helped, before he turned towards our party’s newest addition. “Thanks for keeping her company, mate, but just who might you be?”
I went to answer for him, but came up short when I realised we had yet to even swap names.
The man appeared to find a little amusement in it though, and glanced over towards Matty to give him his reply. “Alvaro. And I was happy to, I apologise for stealing your seat.”
With another wave of his hand, Matty shook his head good-naturedly. “You’re all good, man. ‘M Matty.”
Alvaro smiled with a dip of his head and shook Matty’s hand in greeting, before he then turned to me. I realised a little belatedly that he was now waiting on my name. Matty snorted under his breath at the wide-eyed expression I must've made and I kicked at his shin from beneath the table, ignoring his sudden scowl in favour of glancing towards the handsome stranger.
“Y/n.” I told him around a sheepish smile, but it appeared to grow when Alvaro grinned sweetly in return and pressed a gentle hand to my shoulder.
“Well, Y/n, it has truly been a pleasure.” He murmured to me, enticing eyes locked on mine as he got up from his seat and ducked down towards me. “A mí me basta con saber que tú y yo, existimos en este preciso momento.”
My breath got caught in my throat upon hearing a quote from the book we'd spoken about and it lodged itself there when the Spanish man pressed a soft kiss to my cheek.
“Hasta que nos volvamos a ver. No?”
I swallowed and nodded up at him, touching the back of his hand to show I understood before I let him pull away. I watched him go then, eyes trailing after his retreating figure until he could no longer be seen and tried to wrap my mind around the entire encounter.
“Wow.”
Inhaling sharply, I spun around in my seat to find Matty leant back in his, smirking over at me.
“What?” I questioned and pretended to take a sudden interest in the menu that had been casted to one side a long time ago.
I heard him chuckle lowly before he followed on. “Just- that. The chemistry! Christ, if you don’t shag him I think I just might.”
I couldn’t help the airy huff of laughter that escaped me then and chanced a glance over my menu to find Matty still smirking away without a care in the world.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Bollocks it wasn’t.” Matty argued and set down his own menu to lean across the table towards me. “He was proper into you. I mean, how’d you even get to talking?”
I shrugged, eyes still trained on the many appetisers the bistro had to offer. “He asked for a chair.”
“He asked for a chair?” Matty repeated, though his tone was lined with a lot more bewilderment. “You’re joking, right?”
Again, I gave him a small shrug. “I don’t know, he just asked if the seat was taken and I said he could have it, thinking another table might've needed it- but then he just sat down!”
Matty laughed loudly, a hand coming to rest on the tablecloth. “He fucking wanted you!”
“Shut up.” I rolled my eyes in retort.
“I’m not messing a-fucking-bout here!” Matty stated and I watched as he shoved his sunglasses up into his frizzing curls, “He was all over you just then, and when I walked in I honestly had to do a double take when I spotted the pair of you.”
I shook my head silently.
“Come on, even you have to admit that it was a bit strange of him to just sit at a table with a complete stranger, no?”
It had been. Very ballsy. “Doesn’t mean he liked me though.”
Matty rolled his eyes then with a huff. “You’re blind. I’m telling you right now, he fancied the fuck outta you.”
I chuckled quietly and was grateful to let the topic die when a waitress finally cropped up out of nowhere, taking the full brunt of Matty’s attention.
—
Lounging out on the deck had quickly become one of my most favourite pastimes.
Being out there was so peaceful, whether it was early morning or late evening. I was just enraptured by the landscape that surrounded us as well as the humid air.
It was a little while after lunch when I’d gotten a bit peckish and decided to make myself a bowl of ice-cream to bring outside with me.
I’d taken to lying out under the branches of a nearby peach tree, which liked to offer me shelter from the beaming sun. Sometimes I read, often times I just relaxed out there, listening to Matty move about the place, or play the old guitar we’d found upstairs. It was nice.
Today though, my plans had quickly been interrupted by an unprompted FaceTime call.
I grinned down at my screen as the call connected and caught sight of a familiar bearded man. “Ross!” I exclaimed happily, all too glad to see his face.
“Alright there, stranger?” Came Ross’s chuckled greeting and we seemed to just smile at one another for a long second. “Fucking hell you’ve really caught the sun!”
“Jealous much?”
“Of you being out there whilst I’m sat in this sweaty studio? Yes.” Ross replied with a gruff huff, “Still fuming you and twat-face jetted off before I could invite myself along.”
I giggled and flipped my camera around so that he could see what I was seeing. “Be home soon, only I’ll be forced to miss all this.”
“Yeah, yeah, fuck off. You know what you’re doing.” Ross drawled out unhappily, and when I returned to the screen I found him covering his eyes with a grumpy sort of frown.
“Ah Ross, I’m only messing! Wish you were here too. It’s proper gorgeous.”
“So you and Matty keep telling me.” He humphed, “What are you up to now anyway?”
“Currently just sat eating some ice-cream. Think Matt said he was headed for a shower.”
Ross hummed and I peered down at the phone with squinted eyes to see past the glare of the sun. I grinned when he mimicked me, getting up close and personal with the lens.
“You look good.” He told me when we finally pulled away, chuckling amongst ourselves.
“Yeah?” I answered, almost as way for something to say.
“Yeah, you always do. But you look happier is what I actually mean.”
I bit at my bottom lip and fiddled with the silver spoon I’d stolen from inside. “Feel it.” I said to him quietly, poking now at the melting ice-cream. “It’s different out here. No reminders of back home. Well, I say that then I’ll see Matty pop up.”
Ross snorted softly at that but nodded like he understood, which was something I typically loved about him.
“It suits you. The sun, the smiling.”
I couldn’t help my smile then and turned away to hide it.
“Leave off.” I muttered, gifting him a gentle laugh, one he mimicked. “How are you anyway? How’s the album going?”
“Oh- you mean the album that Matty just upped and deserted us with, that one?”
I huffed out an amused breath and nodded, allowing him to continue on.
“It’s… going, I guess. Mainly just focusing on our own parts as of now.” Then he went on to tell me about this new riff he’d since created with Adam, getting a little excited when he explained how it’d come about during a session together, and where they wanted to use it.
It was sweet to see, and I found that I missed him a bit more than I’d first anticipated.
Matty came and disturbed us a short while later, recounting all the details of our getaway if only to piss Ross off and then embarrassed me when he recalled our earlier encounter with Alvaro the previous day.
I’d left him with the phone and two fingers tossed his way when I swanned back inside to escape the heat- both literally and metaphorically. Listening to the laughter that echoed behind me.
—
I don’t really remember how it went down. Just that I actually had gone down. And hard.
Reckon I had a few violent bruises to prove it too, but I was far too out of it to really focus on that though.
The beeping was back again. Like a dull ache that haunted me. And so were the light whispers and hazing lights. The hand I felt in mine.
There’d been no floating this time around though. No peace. Just that pitch black darkness that I could hardly even recall now.
I must’ve come in and out of it a couple of times because I can remember random bits and pieces. Mostly Matty, his voice and worried face. But there were nurses again too, talks of medication and doctors… another uncomfortable mattress and itchy sheets.
This time though I blinked past the blur and fought to stay awake.
And with a furrowed brow I came to and I glanced about an empty hospital room, similar to the one from before but different somehow too.
People buzzed outside the door that’d been left ajar, talking in English but, Spanish as well? I remembered then that we were in Tenerife. That I was meant to be living it up on holiday, not stuck in another hospital ward.
“Oh! You’re awake.”
I startled at the sudden sound and immediately regretted snapping my head in the voice’s direction. I winced at the fiery ache I felt lick its way up my neck.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” A young woman said, holding a clipboard close to her chest. “I’ll just call your friend in. ¿Sí?”
I simply watched her leave without a reply. And Matty came bounding in only seconds later, looking worse for wear.
“All I asked for was one holiday! One week where nothing happens, and then you go and pull this!” He ranted as soon as he caught sight of me, practically skidding his way over to my bedside.
He was still wearing the clothes I’d last seen him in, jean shorts and the pale pink tee I’d bought him, so I took that to be a good sign.
“I mean, fuck. You scared the absolute shit out of me!” He continued, rubbing harshly at his tired face. “One second you were fine and the next-” He shook his head, “I don’t think I ever moved so fucking fast in my life.”
“Why?” I croaked out with a tiny smile, “Pull a muscle, grandad?”
Matty’s eyes sharpened when they turned to me, “Oh so you are well enough to have kept that shitty sense of humour.”
I wrinkled my nose, but allowed him to take my hand in his. He was putting on a bravado but seemed to have been really shaken by the whole thing.
“I’m sorry.” I murmured, coughing quietly to clear my throat and then forced myself to sit up a tad.
Those hard eyes narrowed and he shot me a well-deserving glare, “Don’t fucking apologise. Just don’t do it again, alright?”
I smiled and attempted to nod past the pounding in my head. “I’ll try. What even happened anyway?”
Matty sighed and kicked a wooden chair closer so that he could sit. I rolled my eyes, choosing to keep quiet about the fact that he could’ve just crawled in beside me.
“They said it must've been the heat at first.” And he fixed me with a challenging look, one that screamed 'I told you so', before he carried on, “But when I told ‘em about the crash and all that… they ran a couple more tests. Just to make sure.”
I hummed quietly, not commenting on his guilty glance. He had nothing to feel guilty for, he’d done what anyone would’ve.
“And then they were in and out of your room, said they didn’t sedate you or nothing but when you collapsed you hit your head pretty fucking hard, kept you knocked out for a while.”
“How long?” I frowned.
Matty huffed out a long breath as he thought it over.
“Near to an hour? You were awake a bit by the time I got you here, but then you passed out again.” He worked out, his fingers playing aimlessly with mine. “Was fucking shitting myself out in that waiting room and this nurse at the reception, barely spoke a word of English. So I spent the entire time wishing you were there to just talk to her and then cursing you out for pulling a stunt like this, again.”
The small chuckle I gave him hurt and so I didn’t apologise another time. Though I did feel guilty for the scare.
“Been out there waiting on you for two and half hours as well, and let me tell you now that their coffee is shite.” He grimaced, seemingly alright with taking lead of the conversation between us. “Tasted like watered down piss, I swear. And I hear I thought that the Spanish loved coffee!”
“Reckon you're thinking of Brazil.” I muttered to him, “Spain’s got Sangria, innit.”
“Ah, yeah probably.” Matty hummed, quiet then to allow the noisy flurry of the hospital outside to trail in.
“So when can I go?” I asked him and he looked over at me, those bags beneath his eyes were back but softened somehow by the glow the sun had gifted him.
“Not sure.” He shrugged, glancing over towards the door. “Could ask. They said they were just waiting on a couple more tests.”
“It’s alright, I can wait.”
Immediately Matty shook his head and went to stand, “No, I’ll go check. Shouldn’t be much longer, hey?”
He gave my hand a squeeze before he left, looking back at me from the doorway before he had the strength to round it. I let go of the sigh I’d been holding in.
Just my luck, I supposed. To be in sunny Spain and end up in hospital once again. I figured now that I’d been in more of them over the last few months than I had my entire life. And that was including the time I'd spent in one before my dad passed.
Toying with the bedding, I tried to recall what little I could of the day before I’d gone and collapsed.
We’d been on the phone to Ross, but then Matty had gotten bored and pestered me into tagging along with him to the beach. I remember the lemon icepop he bought me and the cone he'd gone and dropped into the sand when a bird had swooped too close.
We’d sat outside a cute little cafe for an early dinner, he’d finally caved and let himself have a glass of cava to pair with his paella, and I’d gotten the fish? No, the pisto. Matty had snorted at the name.
It had only been a short walk back to the villa after that and in return for having joined him, I made Matty piggyback me most of the way. He hadn’t stumbled as much as I thought he would, and when he had he blamed it one the wine. ‘Two glasses!’ I’d laughed at him in return.
When we’d gotten back I’d jumped in a quick shower whilst he hooked his laptop up to the flatscreen downstairs, claiming he wanted to rewatch a film. We fought over which one, but ultimately settled on Mamma Mia!, the first one of course.
It had happened just as we’d been getting ready to head up to bed. The long day had worn me out and I remembered feeling a tad bit dizzy when we’d been sprawled out on the couch, drifting slightly as ‘I Have a Dream’ played through the speakers. I can vaguely recall Matty nudging me with his foot, laughing tiredly as I swatted him away.
He’d gotten up first, wandered into the kitchen to grab some water before we headed up. I’d only just gotten to my feet when he’d returned and then nothing. I couldn’t tell you what’d happened.
But I must’ve fainted or something, just like Matty’d said. Because my skull now pounded, my body ached, and I was stuck in this shitty hospital room.
A light scuttle caught my attention in that next moment, it drew me from my thoughts altogether and I looked up, expecting to see Matty walk in.
But it wasn't, and so you can imagine my surprise when the last person I ever thought I'd see was stood there instead.
“Alright, Birdie?”
Part Twenty-one>
#the 1975#george daniel#george daniel the 1975#george daniel fic#george 1975#george daniel x reader#matty#matty healy#george daniel x you#1975#best friend matty#the 1975 band#fic#adam hann#ross macdonald#carly holt#1975 band#matty 1975#series#work#exes to lovers#y/n#reader#multi part fic#x you#x reader#angst#fluff#humour#drama
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Can I have an explanation as to what is the Fyre Festival(?) I don't know if I'm too young or not American enough to know ^^''
Long story short, watch this
youtube
Short story long and I mean long, so a good portion in will have a Read More break for the sake of people's dashboards:
We have a trust-fund baby by the name of Billy McFarland. Full-on too much allowance and money from mommy and daddy and nowhere near enough brains to use it.
Billy calls himself making a black card (credit cards for obnoxiously wealthy people) company called Magnises where the premise is basically
Billy: 'Why, yes, this is a money-sink of what is already a money-sink, but with this you get amazing deals on concerts and meeting celebrities~!'
Anyone dumb enough to sign up: 'Um... Okay, at least that last part sounds good. How does it work?'
Billy: 'That's the neat part! IT DOESN'T!'
So anyone would think 'okay, you can't even make something as simple as a customized credit card work, maybe you should stay away from business and investments for a bit'. Not Billy! Because during some big party or whatever, he happened to meet the famous (to some people) rapper Ja Rule! And they got to talking and decided 'why don't we throw a music festival with high-profile acts in the Bahamas?!'
So they actually flew out to Great Exuma with a bunch of influencer thots and Instagram models and lived it up to the fullest. Why? So they could get promo material for a festival that literally didn't even exist.
So determined were they to get this footage that when one model expressed discomfort at getting into a swimming pool (it was getting late and she was cold), Ja Rule told her to, quote, 'Get your ass in the damn pool'.
So they got this footage and started promoting online. And they sold out! Awesome, right? For them to see how much interest they got had to mean that they realized they needed to get infrastructure and hospitality squared away, right?
Ha ha -- WRONG.
Because even other people who were employed by Billy and Ja Rule were telling them, begging them 'we need at least 2 years to pull off something like this'.
But remember! Billy McFarland has horrific denial issues! So he kept insisting that they could make it happen! Also, something something -- taking out a bunch of short-term loans that he couldn't afford to default on -- something.
So they go full steam ahead!
...By not paying the local laborers they hired, the restaurant-owner they hired, the staff they hired--
But, traloo-traley! They day eventually arrives! Excited festival-goers are hopping on their flights to the Bahamas, expecting the highest luxury that their $1200 tickets could pay for.
By the way, is it... too late to mention that tickets only ranged from $500 to $1200? For a two week music festival? With all amenities included? IN THE FUCKING BAHAMAS?!
Festival-goers step out of the airport and are directed onto a school bus. ...Okay. Where they are then driven to a pretty miserable looking beach. ...Okay. Where they see a swathe of disaster-relief tents.
Welcome to Fyre Festival*!
*Note: The Festival barely ended up lasting two days from a combination of festival-goers seeing the shitshow, trying to leave but not having any spending money (because the Festival was advertised as cashless), and eventually being rounded up by the Bahamian Government and taken back to the airport.
Also: In addition to the festival-goers being promised premium accommodations that turned out to be those disaster-relief tents, they were promised fine dining which those who arrived early got... At the expense of the restaurant owner who was never paid... But the rest were granted the boon of withered salad greens and 'sandwiches' made of limp bread and Government-Approved Cheese-Product (TM).
And all of this doesn't even go into the rumors of wild dog attacks, festival-goers attacking and stealing supplies from each other, Billy asking one of the event-planners, an elderly gentleman who was supposedly a long-time friend of his, to go to the head of Bahamian Customs and offer to suck his dick so they could import some drinking water, and of course Billy's scumbag denial about anything going wrong, about needing to pay his employees in the aftermath, or his eventual jail-time.
But this already got so long so, if anyone wants me to elaborate on anything else, it would have to be in response to a second ask.
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why are there pictures of random people on your blog. were they paid/actors/models or just random people off the internet? you shouldn't put someone's picture on the internet without their permission. also, you should remind people that if they take inspiration from someone else and get proceeds from their art franchise that it should got to whomever inspired the art.
please have some respect for other people's privacy. its not okay even for a seemingly harmless art tutorial to use someone else's stuff for your own gain.
you might be infringing on copyright laws or something else that's related to personal information and the internet.
No way this ask isn't a troll svshdgc. I can only assume this is referring to my Native art tutorials because those are the tutorials I've done.
The "random people" I used in my art tutorial are all famous Native American celebrities, and all the photos are from professional photo shoots (many of them were placed there on sites like IMBD or their own official site by the actor themselves) and/or screenshots from films they were in that they were definitely paid for, and I can assure you they all have more money than I do and don't need my money. It's a little unfair, I think, to say "respect their privacy" about celebrities in these photos that I pulled from, who consented to having their likeness placed & seen by the general public that they then placed on the internet for the purpose of being seen.
How am I "using" them for "my own gain" exactly. I'm also Native American, and I made the tutorial as a response to the fact that I was constantly seeing White artists draw Native American people and characters as racial caricatures and with red skin, so I made it to show people to NOT do that and why it was wrong. I did it to widely benefit Native people and other artists, not myself. I didn't get any financial or popularity gain from this either, and so I fail to see how this was benefitting me or "selfish" on my part.
Do you say this & send this anon to every artist who makes an art tutorial or just the Indian?
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Theory about the MILGRAM prison
(working on this when I'm supposed to be studying for my psychology exam lol)
(i count this as studying for my a-levels, sue me)
Trigger Warning: WWII Germany mention, war crimes mention
One of the questions I keep coming back to is why the prison and the project is called Milgram. The experiment that Stanley Milgram was famous for, his obedience experiment, had more to do with the study of the banality of evil (that was partly his motivation to perform the experiment in the first place) and human obedience for an authority figure than criminal behaviour. What he studied was the willingness of people to obey instructions, even when doing inhumane acts such as administering increasingly lethal shocks to someone who failed a question in a word quiz. This was actually in attempt to investigate whether N@zi Germans in concentration camps/prisons/whatever and such were pure evil or just following orders because they're 'more obedient than other races of people'. He and his colleagues wanted to explain the inhumane acts done during the holocaust, basically, inspired by the criminal trial of Adolf Eichmann (i think thats the name?) about 3 months before the experiment was conducted. Of course, with a bias for Americans.
He and his colleagues predicted that less than 3% of participants would actually administer up to 450 volts to the learner (who was a confederate, i.e. fake. the initial information that participants received was that they were there to help with a psychology experiment on memory:
they would then stage a chance drawing of who would be the 'teacher' (the participant) and the 'learner' (the confederate). the participant was always the teacher. they were then separated so the participant can hear the learner, but can't see them. they were given instructions to administer shocks to the learner if they got the wrong answer, which was made to be frequent-ish. it starts of at 15, then 30, then alll the way up to 450 volts. The shocks were fake, but it would sound like, to the participant, that the learner in the other room was actually experiencing electrical shocks. Re-creation of the study later on used a standardised recording of the learner responding to the fake shocks, then silence, as if to indicate that the learner has passed out.)
Actual results? Every single participant in the baseline procedure administered up to 300 volts. 65% of participants continued up to 450 volts.
The results may be affected by the scientist in the room, which, when faced with apprehension or unwillingness by the participant to continue, will say the following things:
Theoretically, participants should feel free to stop and withdraw from the experiment at any time. Reality? the prompts above literally pressured into continuing to increase the voltage, regardless of if they said they wanted to withdraw. Imagine:
"I- I don't feel comfortable doing this. This is wrong."
"Please continue."
"But- this is wrong! He's hurt, will he be okay?"
"The experiment requires that you continue."
(disclaimer: dialogue is fake, i made it up from watching documentaries and recordings(?) of future attempts to reconduct the study. (i.e. based on what the teacher made me watch in class lol))
And so on and so forth. A lot of participants' attempts to withdraw were met with a sound 'no'. I'd say that going through the experiment itself is traumatic all by itself.
So what does this mean for the Milgram Project?
Honestly, I can only guess that, in a way, it shows how willing most of us are to go along with this extremely inhumane premise. Imagine that the prisoners are real people - well this kind of experiment would get absolutely blasted by any ethics board, and the prisoners would be subject to the Japanese criminal justice system and all that. But imagine somehow passed ethics boards and such. And, instead of the judge being internet people who can discuss and judge freely, it is people who are physically there to be the judge, jury and executioner. The information and experience will be repeated for every participant, every fan of the project. The chances of those of us who will call this kind of prison out drastically decreases, for various reasons. Some of Milgram's participants said that their willingness to go along with the study was because they thought the whole thing was 'play-acting'.
And this scenario is exactly what Es is subjected to. They only know to follow the rules of Milgram, because like the participants in Milgram's obedience study, they can't withdraw. They can't get out. They can only complete the objective they were given, because that's the only way this experiment would end. Jackalope is the scientist in the room in this analogy: they keep Es obedient, keep Es from questioning.
And, like the 'learner' in the original experiment, the prisoners are there to distract us and Es from the true aim of the experiment: to what end will we be jackalope's little obedient doll?
then again, I can be completely wrong. I got distracted from studying. (this counts as studying right????)
#then again i can be completely wrong#arc rubbing their last 2 brain cells together to form a thought#it got meta#tw: war crimes mention#milgram#es milgram#milgram project#milgram theory
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el paraiso de las pandillas.
Pairings: Pacho Herrera(Narcos : TV Series)x f!reader
Warnings: Guns,Blood(a lot of blood)
Synopsis: Y/N are an ordinary woman who has lived a peaceful life in Colombia for two years, until one day a man appeared at your door covered in blood.
AN: I'm not a native English and I'm not good at English, but I hope you can understand what I'm writing. enjoy <3
Next Chapter
Part One :
Throughout her life, she had never made a mistake, not even once, until today.
Amid the debris and wreckage inside the restaurant that surrounded her, hot smoke from gunfire and the smell of death filled the air. She gasped for air, feeling more adrenaline than she had ever experienced before. She placed the gun in her hand forcefully onto the ground with a loud clatter. She raised her hands to cup her own face, realizing the enormity of the mistake she had just made.
How can it go wrong? She wondered.
In that moment, the young woman lifted her head and caught the gaze of another person standing not far away. A tall, well-dressed man from a famous brand who usually looked luxurious and handsome every time she saw him, except this time, his condition wasn't much different from hers. He was staring at her with wide-open eyes, but what emotion was it? Surprise? Shock? Or impressed? It was hard to tell.
In that moment, She understood deeply,
Pacho Herrera that hijo de puta, was her mistake in life.
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Whenever someone here knows that you come from the United States, they always start with the same question: "Why did you move to Colombia?"
And your answer is always the same: "Because I can do so many good things here that I can't do in America."
Your story is simple, just a backpacking girl from the free world who accidentally fell in love with the beauty hidden in this country and decided to settle here. in a small, cheap rented house near the city, and support yourself by working as a high school teacher and volunteering as a community health worker every Saturday and Sunday.
Life during the two years in Colombia was mostly simple and peaceful. The only serious problem you encountered was dealing with underprivileged children in the classroom. There were those who were accustomed to bullying as a routine, girls who worked as prostitutes as a side job, and kid who sold drugs for money. This made it physically and emotionally challenging for you to be a good teacher to these kids.
You visiting the students homes to talk directly with their parents about the issues that arose. You found that, in general, each student was not inherently bad, but due to the societal circumstances of poverty, family institutions, and the country's chronic drug addiction problem, they had no other choice but to fall into such unfortunate circumstances.
Because you grew up in a relatively difficult family, burdened with deep-seated emotional scars, you was determined to provide your students with a better education and a brighter future, far from the troubles you had experienced. You genuine efforts paid off when your students accepted you as both a teacher and a close friend, and began to exhibit better behavior than before, which surprised everyone with the changes that the American girl had brought here.
Your good attitude, as a teacher and nurse who dedicated to helping the less fortunate, was accompanied by a striking appearance with fair skin and bright blonde hair that made you stand out from the locals. Soon, everything about you, including you looks and reputation, became well-known to everyone in the community.
That was what had happened to your life in the past two years, before everything was turned upside down when you entering the third year
And this story began with the sound of a gun.
It all started when you met him, on the day of the first gunshot that rang out in front of your own house.
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Neighborhoods with affordable housing often come with problems. Despite this, it's the only place where you can afford to live, even if you have to deal with unreliable neighbors and noisy drunks every weekend. But everything changes when gunshots ring out on a Saturday evening. The loud noise makes your heart almost stop, and you don't know what's happening outside.
You're too scared to move from behind the sofa in your room. Your blood runs cold, and you feel like death is creeping up on you.
They say that when death is near, people often think about their past. That may be true because you're thinking about all the terrible things that have happened in your life. For a moment, you think you hear your mother's screaming voice, who died a long time ago. But when you listen carefully, you realize it's not your mother's voice, but someone else's voice asking for help from outside your room.
It's probably the dumbest decision you've ever made in your life to open the door to help a stranger. You know that the best thing to do right now is to sit still and pretend like nothing is happening until it's all over. But every minute that passes by slowly, you can't help but think about the voice asking for help outside your door.
It was just a moment of weakness, the only moment you agreed to open the door for someone to come in. He rushed in quickly and almost fell onto the carpet in the room if you hadn't grabbed his other arm first.
You found that he was a tall, handsome man with a mustache and slightly tousled hair. A moaning sound kept coming out of his mouth and the blood flowing from his abdomen let you know that he was seriously injured and if you didn't do anything, he could die right there.
It was fortunate that you were a volunteer nurse. You quickly dragged him onto the sofa before searching for first aid supplies that you could find at that time. You accidentally took a deep breath when you had to take off his shirt, and saw his bare body covered in blood. His face didn't look good at all, but he still had enough strength to talk to you.
"Thank you for opening the door."
You don't answer him. In reality, you didn't trust him, but his injury is the most important thing you need to pay attention to right now.
You tried your best to keep your hands as still as possible as the sharp tip of the knife entered the wound to extract the bullet. It was a fresh surgical procedure without any painkillers, and it was amazing that this man could endure it without screaming or groaning, even though there were occasional curse words coming out.
The three bullets have penetrated different parts of the body, but luckily none of them have hit any vital organs. You safely removed all the bullets and threw them on the table before starting to sew up the wound. You raised your head and observed him for a while to check if he was still alive, and every time you looked at him, he always looked back at you as if he never missed a beat with all your actions.
"You are very good at stitching wounds," he said.
'I'm a volunteer nurse,' you finally answered him, but you still remained guarded and tense, which was noticeable to him because he laughed softly.
"I've never seen a blonde woman in Colombia before," the man continued to try to strike up a conversation. "Where are you from, America?"
"Yes, but actually my mother is Argentinean," you replied.
"My mother is also from Argentina," he nodded slowly, his expression unchanged. "Normally I don't like gringos very much, but I'll make an exception for you."
His words sounded playful, and he still didn't take his eyes off you once. As you pick up the sanitary napkin that you bought and use it to soak up the blood from his wound. and trying not to stare at the gun tucked into his pants.
At this point, you began to worry more and more.
The man with the gun had only two options: the police or the bad guys.
And you have absolutely no idea who you are saving the life of?
"Are you scared?" he asked.
You flinched at his question, feeling like he could read your mind. Your breath trembled as you saw his large hand touch the gun. At this point, you regretted your decision to open the door for him without thinking. You were a lone woman with nothing but a kitchen knife, while he can blow your brains out whenever he wants to.
Even though you didn't know who he was,you stared into his dark brown eyes, begging him:
"I promise I won't say anything. No matter what anyone asks me, okay?"
His facial expression looked surprising, as if he wasn't ready or didn't expect to hear a begged from you. For a moment, it seemed like he was thinking about something that you couldn't possibly know, but it wasn't long before he turned his attention back to you.
"I promise I won't do anything to you, and I won't let anyone else do anything to you," he replied with a chuckle in his throat. A faint smile appeared on his pale face.
"Just know that a Colombian man keeps his promises for life,"
You weren't sure if his words were true or not but your intuition whispered to you to trust him. No matter what promises he gives, he will definitely do as he says.
#narcos: mexico#narcos#pacho herrera x reader#pacho herrera#narcos x reader#alberto ammann#narcos netflix#pacho x female reader#el paraiso de las pandillas
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As an American I got really excited about First Hunt, cause it started spreading the lore over into my territory.
Spoiler for a later EP: I noticed a minor but to me hilarious detail on a re-listen that may only get picked up by Americans who have an interest in hiking. The werewolf in First Hunt is stalking the Appalachian Trail (ACT), a massive trail that runs from the entire south to north length of the US along the East Coast.
When Jon later runs into Julia and Trevor in America, we get this exchange:
ARCHIVIST
And, uh, why America?
[RESIGNED SIGHS, LAUGHTER]
TREVOR
Heard tell there were a wolfman.
[JULIA LAUGHS AT HIM]
Old Davey – he’s down in Plymouth – swore blind his brother had seen one on the Pacific Crest trail –
JULIA
I told Trevor he was a liar – but here we are anyway! Have been for a couple of years.
TREVOR
Hey, now, no wolfman, sure, but they’re’ve been plenty out here that needs killing!
If you aren't paying close attention that many episodes later, you /might/ recognize the callback to First Hunt and figure they just didn't find the wolfman....but Trevor says the Wolfman was on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), which is also a trail that runs from the south to north of the United States, but is on the WEST coast. I laughed out loud when I heard it imagining that they just got the two very long very famous trails mixed up and ended up stuck in America without passports because they went to the wrong side of it on their hunt.
Lmaoo that's amazing I never made this connection thank you for sharing!!
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