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judebelle · 6 months

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been thinking ab joao and reader hooking up behind his teammates backs'... like they've been "involved" for a while but sometimes the tension is too much and they have to sneak away iykwim ;)

sneaky - j.f. x reader

a/n : omfg anon ur gonna be the death of meeeeeee!! also i made this kinda long since i havent posted in a while, oops..

pairing : joao felix x fem!reader

word count : 2.3k

summary : joao and u prefer to keep your love life private, secret even, but the the flirty looks and knowing smirks from across the room are becoming unbearable.

cw : smut obv, lil bit of alejandro x reader, sneaky joao and reader, unprotected sex (wrap it b4 u tap it ppl), make outs, cursing, me not bothering to accent his name lol sorry

---

you were starting to regret going out to dinner with your friend alejandro and his teammates.

the only reason why being that one of his teammates had become more.

hooking up with joao felix on the down low has been fun, you won't lie. and while you enjoy sneaky quickies and flirty messages, there were times where you wish you could just tear off his clothes and fuck that smug smile right off his face.

you were currently sitting in a restaurant, a private room and table was booked for alejandro, his barcelona teammates, and their plus ones. you and alejandro had become inseparable ever since you met in spain a few years ago, and you had grown increasingly close to his teammates.

very close to a certain mr felix.

the first time you met joao, it wasn't anything magical, you just thought he was fit. alejandro had introduced you to him when he came on loan to barca recently, and you just couldn't get him out of your head.

it seems that the feelings were mutual, as that very same night he followed you on instagram. you, of course, played it cool and took your time following him back (you waited like 10 seconds).

from there, you two messaged often, especially after the team would hang out.

joaofelix79 : u got home safe?

ynsusername : ofc i did

ynsusername : alejandro wouldn't let anything happen to me

joaofelix79 : that's good.

you two started messaging more, sometimes even calling each other late in the night. you couldn't explain why, maybe he was just fun to talk to.

you would complain to him about work, and he would complain about a mistake he made in training.

eventually, you two started hanging out alone.

not anything crazy, of course.

joaofelix79 : hey

joaofelix79 : js noticed im about to drive by ur place

joaofelix79 : wanna get some ice cream? my treat

how could you refuse that?

it wasn't all that shocking to you when a surprise ice cream date turned out into a steamy make out session on a bench in a park in the middle of the night.

"we should stop, someone might see us.." you murmured against the portuguese boy's lips, you yourself making no effort to.

"ok, if that's what you want." he pulled away from you, his fluffy hair disheveled thanks to you.

"5 more minutes" you placed your lips on his again, feeling him smile against them.

from there, weekly hangouts became almost nightly. he would pick you up in his car, and you would drive anywhere. you just needed an excuse to make out. you even put your number in his phone.

eventually, joao grew tired of the make outs that led to nothing, and you did too.

12:03 am - joao : wyd

12:03 am - you : was ab to put some instant noodles in the microwave lol

12:04 am - joao : dont bother

12:04 am - joao : come eat at my place

12:05 am - joao : i ordered uber eats

of course, you went, and you two ate the chinese takeout he bought. you two sat and laughed together at his attempt at using chopsticks.

and then you found yourself perched on his kitchen counter, him in between your legs while he rammed into you mercilessly. you left red marks across his back and biceps.

"my god, you feel amazing, querida." joao's words were muffled as his head was nuzzled into your neck, his lips caressing your hot skin with every word he spoke.

"i'm so fucking close, joao.." you whined and whispered curses while your hands found themselves travelling from his arms to his hair, tugging on the soft brown locks.

"let go, y/n, i'm close too!" he removed his flushed face from your neck and connected your lips together again, breathing heavily into your mouth.

you came undone with a sharp whine, arching into him. his thrusts became sloppy as he let out a long groan against your lips, releasing into the condom.

that was the first time you two had fucked, and it definitely would not be the last.

his house was usually where you two would hook up because it was so big, and you didn't have to worry about anything when you were there.

you two fucked anywhere - on the bed, in the shower, on the couch, even in the laundry room.

you found that it didn't really matter where you were. if either of you were craving the other, it happened right then and there. it was fun. it kept you on your toes, kept things fresh and fun.

but it became a curse when you two were at a team dinner.

---

"si, i told him he could go fuck off if that was what he wanted. that guy needs to learn some manners, for fucks sake!"

the table erupted in laughs as pedro went on about some story that you weren't really paying attention to to be honest. you were sat right beside your good friend, alejandro, who was very intrigued in pedro's story and hadn't spoken to you more than twice this evening.

across from you was joao. he was wearing a black dress shirt that hugged his biceps perfectly along with black dress pants. of course, to make your life more difficult, the top two shirt buttons weren't done up.

one more open button and everyone would've seen the hickey you gave him the other-

"isn't that right, y/n?"

alejandro was speaking to you, and you were too busy staring at joao's biceps to hear him.

"hmm? sorry?"

"i said, it was you who i walked in on dancing silently in the darkness darkness of your room, right?" alejandro smirked at the sight of your cheeks going red, this memory being nothing short of embarrassing to you.

"yup, that- uh- that was me..!" you looked down in humiliation as the table giggled at alejandro's unexpected story about you. he loved embarrassing you, it was his thing. he found it fun because he thought of you like a little sister.

you looked up to see joao, laughing along with everyone else at the table, finding amusement in your misery. you shot him a playful glare.

"i'm only teasing, mi corazón." alejandro chuckled before ruffling your hair. "ale!" you whined, fixing your hair. his friends teased you. they all thought of you as their little sister, especially you being one of the younger ones.

the men continued on with their conversations as you continued looking at joao from your end of the table, only this time, he was looking at you too.

he was taking a slow sip of his water, eyeing you down.

joao wasn't the only one dressed all sexy tonight. you wore a short black satin strapless dress that hugged your figure perfectly. you thought of joao when you picked it out, you thought of him while putting it on, and you thought of him taking it off.

it seems that joao had the same thought. the way he looked at you from under his lashes gave you the impression that your outfit choice was a smart one.

you sent him a quick wink.

he smirked and dropped his eyes to your cleavage, widening them.

you rolled yours before continuing to eat your steak.

---

you couldn't take it anymore.

something the way he laughed with everyone at the table, his hair flowing when he turned his head. he had on a gold rolex and a gold chain, both glistening under the lighting over the table.

it was the way he carried himself with such confidence. he knew he was hot, and he knew you knew it too. that confidence definitely carried over into bed.

finally, you got up from the table, excusing yourself to "make a call".

shooting joao a quick look, he took the hint. his eyes followed you, watching you exit the restaurant and head towards the parking lot. after an agonizing 30 seconds or so, joao told everyone he forgot something in his car, and made a beeline to where he saw you last.

he saw you standing outside his car, waiting for him. he made his way towards you.

"so, who did you have to call?" he teased, his eyes waiting for your reaction. you scoffed and rolled your eyes, "very funny.".

you wrapped your arms around his neck, bringing him closer to you as you leaned against his car. he smiled down at you before looking over your figure.

"nice dress.."

"just take it off."

---

you two had squeezed into the back of his car, leaving nothing but surrounding street lights as your light source. you straddled his waist, rocking your hips while you smashed your lips against his. you two were breathing heavily, occasionally breaking the kiss to huff and puff before going back at it again.

joao's arms were wrapped tightly around your waist, his right hand occasionally sliding down to cup and smack your ass. his actions made you yelp into the kiss. your arms were everywhere. cupping his face, on his shoulders, in his hair, on his chest, on his abs.

it was like you two hadn't seen each other in years. like you were drowning and the only way to breathe was.. this.

your smooth rocking of the hips created a hard bulge in joao's pants which felt great on your throbbing clit. he groaned into the kiss, breaking it for you to breathe and to leave kisses down your neck.

"so, fucking, horny" he broke each word with a kiss. you moaned above him. "you can't even last one dinner party without my hands all over you?" you wanted him to shut up, so you grabbed his face in your hand and smashed your lips against his.

you started unbuttoning his shirt, but your hands were too shaky to do it quickly. "take this off, god damnit!" you groaned as he laughed and began unbuttoning it himself. you hiked your dress up and helped him with the last few buttons.

you moved his shirt partially off him, leaving it on his arms since you couldn't be bothered. you leaned down to kiss his chest while looking up at him. he was smiling down at you, hands rested behind his head.

he brought you back up to pull the top of your dress down just enough so that your tits would pop out. when they did, he licked his lips. now it was his turn to lean down and suck on them, making you tilt your head back and pant.

"joao, we dont have time for this-"

"shhh, patience princesa. don't worry." he went back to sucking.

"they're going to realize we're gone- joao!"

he couldn't bring himself to leave your tits alone, but when he did, you quickly reached down and undid his belt , not even bothering to pull it off.

"estás mesmo excitado, não é?" (you're really excited, aren't you?)

you nodded and bit your lip.

he unzipped his pants and pulled his hard cock out of his boxers. you raised yourself up on your knees and hovered over his dick. he held it up with one hand, the other resting on your hip.

"are you ready for me?" he teased.

"enough questions." you cut his teasing short as you took his cock in your hands yourself and sunk down on him.

joao hissed at the unexpected pleasure. he looked up at you, gasping for air above him before tucking a strand of hair behind your ear.

"move for me, bebé."

you did as you were told, lifting your hips up until just the tip of him was left in you, before sinking back down on him, agonizingly slow.

he shuddered at the feeling.

you picked up the pace, causing the car to rock. your tits bounced in his face, causing him to twitch inside you.

"fuck, y/n, you're amazing-" you laugh breathlessly above him, your hands resting on his shoulders for stability while his gripped your hips tightly.

after some time, your thighs were burning, and you were getting tired. joao picked this up, taking control. his grip on your hips was put to some use as he moved your hips up and down for you. he lifted and dropped you so easily and made you move so much faster. you felt the air leave your lungs and arched your back to stick your tits in his face.

he grinned as he thrusted his hips up, meeting you in the middle. he tilted your body back, and started to hit the spot inside you that made you see white.

your pants and gasps turned into moans and whines as you felt the bundle of heat in your core.

"joao, i'm close" you warned, your nails digging into his shoudlers.

"i'm right there with you, baby, oh," he groaned and grunted as he watched him drill into you faster and faster. "meu deus, foda-se!" (my god, fuck!) he hissed with gritted teeth as he felt you clench around him.

his pace was too much for you to hold back. you let go with a gasp and moan, your hand slamming and sliding down the steamy car window, leaving a print.

joao was, indeed, right there with you. he pulled your body off of him and set you down on his thighs hastily before stroking his red, throbbing cock, cumming all over your stomach with a string of grunts and pants.

you both sat there in the hot and dark car in disbelief, covered in sweat and panting, after having the most mind blowing sex you've ever had. you leaned your forehead against his and smiled. he chuckled before teasing you once more.

"let's go. we don't want to miss dessert, do we?"

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ethannku · 3 years

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CHB cabin languages headcanons?

oooooo thank you so much for this ask. there were some cabins where i just had No Ideas, so if any of you do then please rb with your additions!!! and here’s my athena cabin post as well.

zeus cabin: i have no idea... i really don't

poseidon cabin: morse code, bc it’s the maritime language. here’s a post about that too haha.

hades: maybe the languages of all major religions, so they can perform funeral rites? so latin (catholicism), sanskrit (hinduism), arabic (islam), hebrew (judaism), tibetan/mandarin (buddhism). given two of those are dead languages, i think that fits pretty well.

demeter’s cabin: they can speak baby. as in, they can convey emotions to children, and receive and interpret emotions from children. this works with plants as well; they can understand what a plant wants, like sunlight or water. they communicate in vibes.

ares’s cabin: hm i don’t have a language, but heres a hc anyways: they know how every war ever was started and ended. even wars that historians are unclear about. they don’t know they know it until someone asks them, though, so they can’t gather information about it on their owm.

apollo’s cabin: they can speak italian, since italian is often seen as the language of art. you know, renaissance and all that. there are a few headcanons for this one, and some good fics too. i might make a post about this later.

hephaestus’ cabin: they can speak machine (whatever that means) and german. germany is historically the place that has efficient machinery and they were the largest industrial economy in europe for a while. the other option is english because they went through the industrial revolution first, but that’s boring.

aphrodite’s cabin: canonically, they speak french because it’s the language of romance. i want to put a qualifier on this and say they can only speak in the toulousain accent, as it was voted the sexiest accent of france. their accent changes every time france votes a different accent.

hermes’s cabin: they can speak the language the other person wants to hear. like if they are in the middle of a heist, they’ll suddenly know just how to beguile the security guards into letting them take things, regardless of language.

dionysus’s cabin: these guys can speak three languages: french, italian, and spanish. france, italy, and spain are the top three wine makers in the world. they don’t have much use for these languages, but sometimes its nifty if they want to go to france and order a bottle, for whatever reason.

iris’s cabin: anon said tamil, but i want to say that they would speak whatever language the person they are talking to can speak the best. since iris is the goddess of communication, it makes sense that they would be able to communicate with anyone, you know? yes this is the same as the hermes cabin, but i think that iris kids retain the languages they speak and can learn languages really quickly, like in a day, whereas hermes kids just know them when its convenient.

obv i left out some cabins but like i said, feel free to add on!!! thank you so much for the ask!

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theliterarywolf · 2 years

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Submitted by Anonymous Problem with "Westerners" is that some will include middle Europe to that, so that'll cause another layer of discussion and misunderstandings. Eastern Europe will be an exception to many, unless the people have no idea about the difference between Eastern and Western Europe. I've seen it used plenty to encompass parts of Europe as well, so even that isn't the best option. I wasn't saying that 1st gen, or even 2nd-3rd'etc diaspora aren't (their parents origin land)-American. It was more that someone who's actually literally has no ties to a place, shouldn't claim that they are from that place. If you DO have active parts in your ancestors roots, it's different, because it still is your culture as well. I just think that people who don't even know where a country on a map is, shouldn't claim to be X-American. Like when you see someone claiming to be Scottish-American, but said "Scottishness" was their great-great-great-great-great-grandpa and that their literally only "new" tie to any European heritage, which they just pay lip service to, and that's it. -I've seen/heard about these people coming to these countries, let's continue using Scotland, and trying to act like they're part of the culture and it's theirs, when it's very clear their only interest in the culture has been some weird fantasy version. Running around with fake Scottish accents, wanting a "family tartan" and then thinking Scottish people only run around in kilts eating haggis. So everything being very stereotypical. Versus a family who immigrated to the US, and do in fact keep an active part in their family heritage, but also their countries culture and heritage going actively. I will say though, that part of my belief here comes from, that I believe your skin tone doesn't stop you from being X-anything. You can be a Black-Swede, if you've become part of the lands culture, and you also view yourself as such, obvs more likely to be the case with people who are the result of their family living for a few generations on a country than the aforementioned 1st-generations, 2nd-3rd etc who might still consider themselves as being actively from the country they moved from.

It's actually been my experience that a lot of people only think of US, UK, and Canada when they hear 'The West'. The 'major' European countries (France, Spain, Germany, etc.) and Eastern Europe are typically seen as their own entities in those conversations. Though I can understand where the confusion would surge up for the perspectives of those who lump everything that's technically caucasian as one monolith. Even though that's it's own 'mm, maybe don't do that' can of worms.

Okay, now I get what you were coming across with that point. Yeah, I can agree especially since that's how I felt in regards to people who had spent all their lives going 'lol, Africa's a shithole; I saw it on this totally unbiased documentary' and then suddenly going 'yas, let's celebrate our strong African blood; Mother Africa~' just because they watched Black Panther.

#submitted post

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alwaysyousweetcreature · 4 years

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I was tagged by my love @ishipmutualrespect to answer this questions!! here we go:

1. What is the colour of your hairbrush? It’s fuchsia with my name on it (it was a gift from my little cousin)

2. A food you never eat? I eat almost everything but if I can I tend to avoid sausages.

3. Are you typically too warm or too cold? Neither? I’m pretty ok with my temperature

4. What were you doing 45 minutes ago? Finishing dinner and cleaning up the dishes.

5. What is your favourite candy bar? mmh I really like Kit Kats

6. Have you ever been to a professional sports event? Yup, mostly soccer. My favourite game was Italy VS Spain.

7. What is the last thing you said out loud? “I’m going back to were I was all day. BED.”

8. What is your favourite ice cream? I looove mint chocolate chip and don’t get me started on Stracciatella bro.

9. What was the last thing you had to drink? Coke

10. Do you like your wallet? I like it better when it’s not empty.

11. What was the last thing you ate? Salad and Piadina

12. Did you buy any new clothes last weekend? Nope.

13. The last sporting event you watched? Maybe a soccer game? Was it juventus? probably.

14. What is your favourite flavour of popcorn? Sweet and salty. MY FAVE EVER.

15. Who is the last person you sent a text message to? My Boy

16. Ever go camping? Yas, every summer. And I’m really sad i don’t get to go this summer.

17. Do you take vitamins? nope.

18. Do you go to church every sunday? I used to!

19. Do you have a tan? HaHA I wish.

20. Do you prefer Chinese food or pizza? Pizza obv.

21. Do you drink your soda with a straw? Nope I try to avoid single use plastic? so no straw for me even tho I know there are other tipes of straws.

22. What colour socks do you usually wear? black, or blue.

23. Do you ever drive above the speed limit? Always.

24. What terrifies you? Dying

25. Look to your left, what do you see? My bediside table

26. What chore do you hate? Cleaning the top of my wardrobe

27. What do you think of when you hear an Australian accent? CHRIS HEMSWORTH

28. What’s your favourite soda? Coke

29. Do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive-thru? We usually go in, unless it’s past midnight and we want a snack.

30. Who’s the last person you talked to? In person my dad, on the phone my boy and my dadine

31. Favourite cut of beef? I looove the FILETTO mann

32. Last song you listened to? I think it was Treat People With Kindness this morning while attempting Yoga

33. Last book you read? A book about make up

34. Favourite day of the week? Used to be Friday, now it’s defo Sunday.

35. Can you say the alphabet backwards? Don’t think I can.

36. How do you like your coffee? I prefer tea!

37. Favourite pair of shoes? My vans

38. At what time do you normally go to bed? At 11 pm

39. At what time do you normally get up? At 7.30 am

40. What do you prefer, sunrise or sunsets? I’m not a morning person so sunsets defo.

41. How many blankets are on your bed? Two

42. Describe your kitchen plates? They are white, with geometric symbols, kinda like a kandinskij ‘s painting

43. Do you have a favourite alcoholic beverage? I do, i love long islands.

44. Do you play cards? Yes, but not the fancy games like poker

45. What colour is your car? My little baby is light blue. It belonged to my grandad and I love her (yes her name is Pina)

46. Can you change a tire? HAHAHAH Absolutely not. If i broke a tire I would be in tears calling my dad.

47. What is your favourite state/province? I don’t have one in particular, i just love to travel and every state has its own beauty.

48. Favourite job you’ve ever had? mmh I am a make up artist (theoretically speaking) so that’s what i love to do.

49. How did you get your biggest scar? I got knee surgery because i broke my leg while skiing.

50. What did you do today that made someone else happy? I was a shitty daughter today. so the answer will be, nothing. You know i’m going to tag the rest of my crew @betterlatethanhouie @itsantigone @likearagingroar @nonsocomechiamareilmioblog1 @angel4790 @hisbravery @oopshiaddict Bye love you

#tag games #do it if you wnat!!!#and tag me so i can seeee!!!

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founderofshield · 6 years

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4, 18, 27

Hey, thanks for the ask dear!

2. do you prefer spending your holidays in your country or travel abroad?

Usually I travel abroad. Mostly because I studied abroad in the US and Spain so I have friends everywhere that can offer me free housing haha. But France has some dope places to visit too (outside of Paris obvs)

18. do you speak with a dialect of your native language?

Just plain ol’ french. I don’t even have a specific accent.

27. favourite national celebrity?

Huh that’s hard… I used to be a HUGE fan of Vanessa Paradis. Not so much anymore. I also love some actors Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, Jean Rochefort (who pasted away last year T_T), Gregory Fitoussi (he was in Mr Selfridge)… I dunno yeah. Can’t think of someone specific.

“hi, I’m not from the US” - Ask me!

#ask game #asks #beautifulwhensarcastic

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folukeifejola · 6 years

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I am constantly looking for films set in colonial Africa. For some reason they are very rare. I wonder why? There is an old movie starring Pierce Brosnan (one time 007). Mister Johnson. And not many more. However, I found one recently on Netflix. ‘Palm Trees in the Snow‘ It is a lovely Spanish language historical romantic drama set on Bioko Island in Equatorial Guinea [not Guinea Conakry, and not Guinea Bissau, and definitely not Papua New Guinea].

It would be a good idea to watch it (if you have access) before reading this article. Let me call out Baba Spoilers.

Baba Spoilers, Announcer Extraordinaire

Spoilers O! tueh tueh

In other words, there will be massive movie spoilers in this article.

A little background information about Bioko Island: It used to be called Otcho by the Bubi people who have lived there since approximately the 7th century BC. In 1494 it was renamed Fernando Pó in honour of Portuguese navigator Fernão do Pó after he ‘claimed’ it as a Portuguese colony. The Portuguese developed the island for sugarcane crops among other things. Fast forward a few hundred years, during which the Dutch turn up briefly as well. In 1778, under the Treaty of El Pardo, Portugal ceded Bioko, Annobón, and the Guinea coast, Rio Muni, to Spain, together forming modern Equatorial Guinea, in exchange for territory on the American continent. Then the British also make an appearance. One tiny island, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, British. (Why only them???) But from 1843, the Spanish regained control of Bioko, using it as a dumping ground for undesirable Afro-Cubans and Spanish people they didn’t like. From this time till independence in 1968, Spain developed large cocoa plantations for which thousands of West African workers were imported as labourers. And here begins our story…

Map of Bioko Island; Equatorial Guinea

The historical scenes on Bioko in the film begin in 1953. It’s a film of a book. I am assuming you have watched the film and realise that it is a very moving story. Good acting and exceptionally beautiful visually. [I would watch it for the visuals only]. Also good music. Bisila’s song is very emotional. I really love the scene with the turtles on the beach and the accompanying metaphor spoken by Anton. ‘One never forgets where one was born.‘ As you can see from the map, Bioko is very close to Nigeria. And so, Nigerians turn up a lot in the story. When there is a party, the Nigerians are in charge of it. Naturally. So generally, I would recommend it. Please watch it and let me know what you think of it.

There a few things I have issues with though. (Obvs! I have written a nearly 2000 word article!) For a film set in Equatorial Guinea, we hear very little from actual Equatorial Guineans. All the scenes are focused on the foreigners. Despite this being a love story, even the poster does not centre the heroine. Erasure and gaze are deployed here. Where is the centre? Who is the story about? Who is it being told for?

It is worrying that the black men are largely depicted as aggressive, hypersexed and mute. Colourism also comes into play; the darker ones speak less and are more violent. Bisila’s husband, Mosi, is practically silent throughout the whole nearly 3-hour movie. As a key part of the central love triangle that seems a bit reductive. In contrast, did dastardly Jacobo really need that much screen time? Gustavo, who seems to be the resident African nationalist has barely any lines. We know that the Spaniards are fearful of the political change of independence, but what about the perspectives of the people of Bioko and Equatorial Guineans? Yes, it is a love story, but there was enough room and time to fill in the gaps in the political context especially as that political context has a profound effect on the story and the protagonists.

I would definitely have loved to hear more of Bisila’s thoughts. What does she see in Kilian? When the story gets to her bit of narration, there is a foregone conclusion that she has feelings for Kilian, with no foreshadowing of that in their prior interactions. Of which they had very few. He did not even know her name! Also the oversexualisation of interracial encounters in the movie was a bit problematic. Julia & Manuel for e.g. don’t get the same treatment. It felt like a metaphor for the exotification and fetishization of Africa.

There was some misogynoir going on there with the gaze on Bisila’s body. She was undressed for a large part of the movie. A hint of fetishization and exotification again seemed to be in play. So, this feels to me like a metaphor. Africa constantly being stripped and laid bare, open to a certain type of exploitation often couched as benevolent. In most of the movie Bisila lacked agency and this lack of agency was not really addressed.

I watched the movie with the English dub, if you do not understand Spanish, you can either do that or watch with subtitles. One thing that completely jarred, with the English dub, was the dubbed voices of the black people. Without exception they all spoke with African American accents. ALL OF THEM. It was so incongruous that I found it difficult to concentrate on what they were saying. Close your eyes you may be watching Atlanta… or something similar.

The movie used a very light hand on the nature of colonialism and the colonial plantations. This is basically the context of the action in the movie. And it was mostly shuffled off to the background, and the way in which the power dynamics of that context affected the protagonists and their choices I think was largely discounted. I wonder if this is the same in the book. If you know let me know. But it felt like a movie about a flood in which no mention is made of anyone got wet, or a setting based on a towering inferno where no mention is made of burning people burning or a movie set against the backdrop of a famine where access to food is not really addressed.

So a little bit of political context and some legal points (I look at everything through the eyes of the law, I am after all, a lawyer and a teacher #canthelpmyself. Sue me. If you dare). One thing people seem to forget, or are unaware of is the fact that White-owned plantations existed not only in the US, but in most of the Americas, as well as across Africa and Asia. When the slave trade was outlawed, these plantations did not cease to exist, and people who had engaged in slavery – slave and plantation owners – still needed cheap labour for these plantations. This was vital, not just to those individuals, but also the nations for which their produce provided a lot of revenue. To ensure that economies did not tank, colonial governments gave plantation owners low-cost land grants. They also forced the local population to work on the plantations. Monopolies were created by preventing the sale of crops grown by other farmers. These state-supported plantations often produced most of a colony’s exports. Similar in many respects to plantation slavery. These labour relationships were sometimes called indentured servitude – so, not slavery. That’s the ‘beautiful’ thing about the law. As the example by Sundiata illustrates:

‘the labourer found himself working for the period of the advance, three months, as unpaid labour’ [Sundiata, 1974: 104]

Planters detained labour but failed to pay their contracts, resulting in a situation of de facto slavery.

So it is interesting how the legal abolition of a thing (in this case slavery) often results in the evolution of the thing a step away from the legal definition of what it used to be, but in spirit, more or less the same thing. Such that legally the doers of the newly made thing cannot be convicted for doing the abolished thing, but by taking just one tiny step away from the old doing, the old results are kept alive. (Gregorio’s use of the whip is many shades of Kunta Kinte and Roots.) This also exposes the dangers of naming things. Once a named thing is legally defined and confined, to be the named thing, a thing must fit into all the boundaries of the definition. If it does not, then, it is not the abolished thing. It is a new thing for which new resistances must be mounted. And the cycle continues. Thus using indentured labour on African plantations was (legally) not the same as using enslaved Africans’ labour on plantations in the Americas. But in truth the power relations remained largely the same.

And this brings to the crux of my article. It is amazing how a narrative has developed suggesting that interracial relationships signify a move towards ending racism, when we know that heterosexual relationships do not signify less sexism. In many cases, they actually just signify misogyny. We must always talk about the power dynamics. Without discussing the context above, Kilian and Bisila’s relationship is not examined with any reference to the power dynamics between them. Even though some of the horrors of the system are shown, there is an attempt to cast Kilian as an innocent caught in a system beyond his control. But he is still complicit in the system and benefits from it. Gregorio ‘provokes’ Kilian to the point where Kilian violently whips an African. Innocent? When he sees Bisila for the first time, he is in the process of ‘falling in love’ with the sights, sounds and smells of the country and she appears as a physical embodiment of this desire for an exotic Africa.

And this is my question and observation on the true meaning of love; this has been examined in an article by Panashe Chigumadzi who articulated my feelings thus:

‘love without justice, without a reckoning with the history that has created our present realities, is not really love at all.’ Panashe Chigumadzi

Palm Trees in the Snow is a beautiful and romantic movie, in which the romance is so overwhelming that we may fail to note the absence of love. A love that does not acknowledge the history that created Bisila and Kilian’s realities. Love without justice.

Bibliography

Sundiata, Ibrahim K. “Prelude to Scandal: Liberia and Fernando Po, 1880–1930.” The Journal of African History 15, no. 1 (1974): 97-112.

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Palm Trees in the Snow: I am constantly looking for films set in colonial Africa. For some reason they are very rare.

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