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nerdieforpedro · 1 month

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My Teddy Bear enjoys Leather

Javier Gutierrez x plus size female reader

This fanfic is for 18+ MDNI

Word Count: 892

Warnings: established relationship, unprotected P in V, riding, oral sex (male receiving), fingers and HANDS (did we expect different from me?), the color red, edging, cockwarming, breath play, Javi G is his own warning (I’m not sorry I had him say any of it!)

Summary: Your boyfriend Javier has deemed it appropriate to finally ask you for something important to him.

Notes: I am a sponge. There was talk of what one might do with a different Pedro character’s nose. I was being a menace in a friend’s DM and thought: “I should take some of these mini drabbles and make something with it.” That friend of course was @lady-bess and she encouraged me. 😆 So here we are with splashes of noses, @morallyinept ‘s Javi’s special room and my own spin on things because Javi’s color is red baby. ❤️ @rhoorl helped me with some translations because I already have trouble with English, I need all help I can get for Spanish because fee be it from me to butcher a beautiful language.🥹

Main Masterlist / Javi Gutierrez Masterlist

You’ve never been one to kink shame. You’ve also never been asked to use leather in this manner either. Javier Gutierrez has been the sweetest boyfriend you’ve ever had. He only raised his voice in bed when your hand slipped off his chest while you were riding him and grabbed his neck. You apologized but he of course told you not to worry about it. Javi never wants you to fret or feel bad about anything.

He spends an equal amount of time between your thighs and buried in your cunt. It was after spending another night with him, your tongue slid down his shaft following the vein on the side of his cock down to his balls, waking him by nibbling on the skin lightly with your teeth. So there was another time Javi raised his voice waking up with your ass and swollen pussy from the night before staring at him. He reached out, two fingers parting your folds to see your core twitching while your moans were muffled by your lips nipping at his foreskin. Pausing to raise your head, you looked up at Javi whose chest was heaving along with the soft swell of his belly.

“Buenos días mi amor (Good morning my love). Te estoy dando besos dulces (I’m giving you sweet kisses). I need to focus. Don’t touch me yet Javier.” You said plainly, watching him to ensure he took his hand back. “Put them behind your head.” Javier’s eyes dilated as he interlocked his fingers and placed his hands behind his head, watching as your mouth took in his cock swirling your tongue about the head before starting to swallow more, bobbing your head. Javi resisted the urge to thrust his hips, trying to keep still as possible. He needed to keep from cumming, to watch your thighs drip with slick arousal from taking him so deeply, your fingers grasping his thighs where your nails were digging into his skin. The sensation was too much for poor Javier.

“Quierda (sweetheart)!” Was the only thing he was able to say over and over, watching you drink his spend and it dripping from your mouth.

This was the moment Javier decided to ask you into his special room - private room. He’s never shown this room to anyone, just collecting pieces to use, many of them he couldn’t use by himself.

It was a beautiful dinner, you wore the red dress that Javier enjoyed on you, it was strapless with an asymmetrical split. Exposing much of your thigh and leg when you walked and sat, jiggling as Javier watched you walk across the room to the sealed door that had a keypad on it. He entered his code and opened the door. All manner of leather straps, flogs, bells, lined the wall, two harnesses hung from the ceiling. Your eyes were wide from shock.

“Mi vida (my life). I want more of you did the other night. Command me. Restrict me. Some pain is fine, so long as it is from you. This room has all the tools you will need for this.” It’s not something you’ve ever done, never really entertained the idea of it. But if it’s for Javier, your sweet, never asks your for anything except your time, boyfriend. You could at least try.

Now you’re on a circular bed in this sealed room with Javier Gutierrez, a red leather collar placed around his neck meant for breath play. You’ve told him not to touch himself and not to touch you either, even though you long for for them to knead your rolls and folds like he always does, you’ll abstain for him if it brings him greater release. Standing above him naked, you just have him using his perfectly angled nose to tease your clit, but he cannot use his mouth, “Javi, mi bueno niño (my good boy). I’m going to take you in now. You listened so well.” A kiss to his forehead earns you a sigh from him, your palms run along his arms up to his shoulders, centering yourself over his dripping cock. Using him to soothe the ache inside you, your hips became flush with his. “Let’s sit together in your special room. Touch me but don’t move me or your hips.”

Javier’s hands kneaded your back and hips as his mouth, being careful not to move you as instructed. He had a request, he wanted you to do it for him, to him. The breath play worried you, is there a possibility you could hold it too long?

“Cariño (dear). Please, just one time.” Javier pleads with you. Explaining that you’d never done that before and you didn’t want to hurt him, he shook his head. “Mi amor, you could never hurt me. Just pull on my collar enough to make the bell jingle at the end while you sit a top of me, taking me so deeply.” As you warm his cock, you grip the red leather strap connected to the collar, wrapping it once around your hand you pull, cutting his air a bit as his cock twitches wildly inside of you. “Más por favor mi amor (More please my love). You hold my life in your hands. Milk me, have my air, use my cock to come.” Rolling your hips slowly, begins a new chapter with your leather teddy bear Javi.

The fic by @morallyinept is called Door Number Three that helped inspire this. One of her giflets. ❤️

Some peeps who may want to see Javi in red and working that nose 👃: @secretelephanttattoo @maggiemayhemnj @magpiepills @avastrasposts @pedroshotwifey @megamindsecretlair @alltheglitterandtheroar @angelofsmalldeath-codeine @yorksgirl @goodwithcheese @for-a-longlongtime @legendary-pink-dot @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin @trulybetty @fhatbhabie @readingiskeepingmegoing @harriedandharassed @survivingandenduring @soft-girl-musings @heareball @rhoorl @mysterious-moonstruck-musings

#pedro pascal characters #fanfiction #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #javier gutierrez #javier gutierrez x reader #Javier Gutierrez x plus size reader #Javier Gutierrez smut #a Nerdie fic

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bloodynereid · 1 year

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https://www.tumblr.com/mlwriting5/712087716240801792/warren-and-camila-speaking-spanish-to-each-other

OMG WAIT-

OKOK concept!

(This kinda goes with your warren with bassist!reader story!!)

The reader learning spanish from cami or warren's mother or grandmother and recites her vows for him IN SPANISH !!!! 💗💗

(That story made me soft ~ and I cant get it out of my head 💗💗)

The Language of Love

pairing: warren rhodes/rojas x fem! reader

a/n: hi anon! i hope i ended up doing ur request justice cause it has potentially been one of my favorite things i have ever written. i may be biased cause i got to practice my spanish lol. also if anyone is a native spanish speaker ik that my grammar is like potentially off cause i haven't written much in spanish since i moved to the uk. hope you enjoy :) oh! and random fact but i actually have the vows written in the way they are described in my planning book cause i wanted to make sure i had an accurate enough translation (fuck google translate) 💗

tw: kissing, swearing, christian weddings (??), potentially butchered spanish grammar, mentions of sex

description: wedding vows are some of the most important parts of the wedding ceremony. they represent love, devotion and companionship.

Y/N (bassist for Daisy Jones & The Six): I always knew I wanted to be a bassist. It became ingrained in my soul when I was 13. That meant that most of the time I should have spent studying was instead used for learning and practicing bass lines. And as you can see it paid off. But that also meant I didn’t listen in Spanish class, so when I desperately needed to know it I didn’t have any idea what I was doing.

Your groaning could probably be heard across the country. You were sitting under one of the many trees that littered Cami and Billy’s backyard. An Oxford English to Spanish dictionary laid open on your lap as you fruitlessly tried to find the correct word for what you were looking for.

Who knew that the Spanish language held so many different versions for every single word? You set down the notepad defeated. On one side laid written in neat handwriting the vows you had been planning for the wedding in English. On the other side was an amalgamation of Spanish words that you weren’t even sure made sense when you linked them together.

Why the hell were there so many conjunctions?

“Hey sweetheart. How is it going?” Cami asked as she set down a jug of iced tea. Julia was playing with soil on one side of the garden and was basically engulfed in her own little world.

Today was one of the ‘writing days’ as the rest of the band had dubbed them because Daisy and Billy basically disappeared to do god knows what and somehow came back with another masterpiece of a song. So that left the rest of the band with nothing to do.

You had come to see Cami because she was the only other person that you knew well enough that spoke Spanish and could trust with something as delicate as this.

“Shitty. What do you expect?”

“Hey! Auntie Y/N said a bad word.” Jules said as she looked up from her playing, making you burst out laughing at her overly serious expression.

“Sorry honey.” You said between slightly frustrated laughter.

“Here let me see what you have so far.” You passed over your mangled notebook to Cami and watched with growing anxiety as her eyebrows were pulled further and further together before she let out a small laugh.

“Hey! Stop laughing, this isn’t funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

“Oh god. I’m going to fu- screw this up so badly aren’t I?”

“No. I’m not letting that happen. Let’s start fresh okay?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Over the course of the afternoon, you basically ended up butchering one of the most beautiful languages multiple times. Even Julia, a toddler, was basically cringing away at your horrendous pronunciation.

“Okay let’s try this part again. Pu-”

“Pu-”

“Die-”

“Rrra.”

“All together now. Puudierra.”

“Pudeta.”

“Oh god.”

“I’m hopeless.”

“Ok maybe you’re a little hopeless.”

“CAMI!” You let out an outraged yell and then threw one of the outdoor pillows in her face, which only made her laugh even louder.

Over the next month, you basically had a daily session with Cami. Trying to nail down the perfect rolled r’s and getting the pronunciation perfect. Sometimes you did it on the phone and sometimes you were able to go down to their house. Warren was actively getting suspicious as to why you kept disappearing.

Warren: I honestly thought she was cheating or something. Which basically broke my heart in two but then I decided to be a mature adult about it.

Y/N: He asked me about it, yeah. And I'm incredibly shitty at keeping secrets so I basically just said it was a surprise for the wedding. I to this day think he thought it was probably a sex thing.

Warren: Definitely thought it was a sex thing but… I think what I ended up getting was arguably much better.

You clutched onto your father’s arm like it was a lifeboat. Quickly reciting all the lines in your head as you took a deep, steadying breath. Then you were suddenly standing in front of Warren, the big sap, cause you could definitely see some tears in his eyes. That instantly made you feel better as you listened to the priest recite all of the usual wedding prayers.

Warren’s suit-covered arm under your fingertips was definitely easing the tension that had been building during the last few revision lessons with Cami. You had decided to forgo a huge wedding and so all of your close friends (the band mostly) and relatives were all sitting on chairs on the houseboat.

Then it was time for the vows. Somehow you were saved because Warren decided to go first.

“Y/N L/N. You are the love of my life and my entire world. These years that I have spent with you have been the best of my life and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for us. You hold some much love and talent that I can’t believe I have been lucky enough to call my girlfriend, my fiance and now my wife. I knew I wanted to marry you the second that I saw you. I love you, mi corazón (my heart). Thank you for agreeing to come along for the ride.”

You took a deep breath in and tried to will away the tears of pure happiness in your eyes. Warren sent you a lovesick smile that you returned wholeheartedly.

“Warren Rojas. Tu eres el amor de mi vida. Y ojalá no voy a arruinar tu hermosa lengua, pero quería hacer algo para ti en este día tan importante. Tu eres mi fuego. Tu eres mi alma. No puedo imaginar una vida sin ti. Creo que yo no pudiera vivir si tu hubieras a desaparecer ahorita. Una vez tu me dijiste que todos somos estrellas. Nuestras almas se convierten en esas luces en el cielo después de nuestras muertes. Lo encuentro loco que yo te encuentre en este océano de estrellas. Tu eres mi estrella brillante. Mi amor por ti es tan grande que todas las estrellas en el cielo ni siquiera se pueden comparar. Estoy tan feliz por casarme contigo. No puedo esperar para todas las aventuras del futuro y para que finalmente te pueda llamar mi marido.”

(Warren Rojas. You are the love of my life. And I’m hoping that I don’t mess up your beautiful language, but I wanted to do something for you on this important day. You are my fire. You are my soul. I can’t imagine a life without you. I think that I would not be able to live if you were to disappear right now. One time you told me that we are all stars. That our souls are converted into the lights in the sky after our deaths. I find it crazy that I was able to find you in this ocean of stars. You are my brightest star. My love for you is so large that all of the stars in the sky couldn’t even compare. I am so happy to be able to marry you. I can’t wait for all our future adventures and being able to finally call you my husband.)

Warren looked at you with tears in his eyes and with the greatest smile on his face that you almost didn’t notice when the priest said you were allowed to kiss. You were sure you had messed up a large amount of the words and the pronunciation but it was all worth it to see that look in his eyes when he finally kissed you.

A kiss to seal your future together.

i missed writing for warren so hopefully will be writing much more for him

oh! and if you understood the minor reference to that oscar isaac and pedro pascal interview in the title i officially adore you.

taglist: @yesshewrites1 @pinkdaiisies

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coneyislandbabey · 1 year

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the pick-me-up. -> w.rojas

WARNINGS: me possibly butchering some spanish (sorry guys I only speak English and Italian)

SYNOPSIS: Life has been wearing you and Warren down lately, but Mariposa saying her first word really brings up your spirits word count: 1,138

NOTES: Written for this request! Part of the mariposaverse, other related fics can be found on my masterlist.

You and Warren were exhausted.

After nearly a year of raising your daughter, Mariposa, in the falling-apart house that several of your other bandmates also lived in, the two of you had finally found a house of your own. It was perfect, all warm wood and huge windows and a beautiful backyard brimming with greenery, and only a few streets away from the old house. You were so wrapped up in the euphoria of starting this new chapter of your lives, that you forgot what absolute hell moving could be.

And absolute hell it was. Unpacking was proving to be a very slow process, considering that you both were at the studio so often recording an album. Tonight, the two of you were sitting on the floor of the living room, eating Chinese takeout on the coffee table while surrounded by yet-to-be unpacked cardboard boxes. The news was playing on the television but the sound was turned off, reducing the whole thing to meaningless talking heads and cuts to the occasional photo or video. Mariposa was in her highchair nearby, playing with her mashed banana more than she was eating it.

“Looking at these boxes is making me want to die,” Warren announced sullenly around a bite of fried rice. You knew exactly how he felt, because you felt the same way. Unpacking all the boxes seemed like a monumental, insurmountable task.

“Maybe we should forget about unpacking them and just live with them?” you proposed.

Warren nodded sagely. “A new kind of decor, I like it.”

“Exactly,” you said, pointing your fork at him. “You get me.”

He laughed, but even that sounded weary. You took in the dark circles under his eyes and the tenseness of his muscles, knowing you looked the same. The last few weeks had been filled with hard, long days and barely any sleep. The worst part of it all was that you had hardly had time for each other, or even for Mariposa. It had you both feeling desperate and dejected, and you knew if something didn’t change soon, something was going to snap.

Behind you, Mariposa began babbling and smacking her hands on the tray of her highchair, signaling that she had gotten bored even of playing with her food. Sighing, you stood up and went to the kitchen wetting some paper towels so that you could clean her face and hands before setting her free.

“Okay, you, time to get ready for bed,” you cooed at her, gently grasping her wrist so you could clean her hand. Behind you, Warren stood up and began tidying after your dinner mess. Once clean, you lifted Mariposa and cradled her close to you, reveling in just having her in your arms for a moment.

You turned around to ask Warren if he needed any help cleaning before you took Mariposa to bed, but the baby in question interrupted you before you could speak. She lifted her chubby little arm towards Warren, making grabby hands at him.

“Papá!” She said, and you and Warren both froze.

“Did she just–?” he asked.

In response, she wriggled in your arms and said again, “Papá!”

Warren dropped the empty carton in his hand, his eyes widening.

“Oh my god, she just said her first word!” You squealed, looking down at the little girl in your arms in wonder. She was still making grabby hands at Warren, and he nearly tripped over the coffee table in his haste to get to her and pull her into his arms.

“I was her first word!” He shouted, a brilliant grin spreading across his face. He laughed, a sound of pure joy, and leaned over to smother her face in dozens of kisses. “¡¡Sí, soy tu papá!!”

Mariposa giggled, Warren’s mustache tickling her face, and you couldn’t help but laugh with her, overwhelmed by pride and excitement and love. Warren was cooing at Mariposa in Spanish, his voice so saccharine and full of affection, intermittently pressing a kiss to her chubby cheeks or into her curls.

He looked up at you, his eyes bright, more awake than you had seen him in weeks. “Baby, she said papá!”

“I know!” You shouted, possibly sounding even more excited than him. Mariposa was his whole world, she had been since the very minute you had told him you were pregnant, and you knew how much it meant to him that her first word was his name.

Warren reached toward you with the hand that wasn’t holding Mariposa, hooking one long finger through one of your belt loops and tugging you toward him. You laughed as you stumbled into his chest, his arm wrapping around your waist as he pressed kisses into your cheek the way he had been doing to Mariposa a few moments earlier.

“My girls,” he mumbled, holding both of you to him as close as he could.

“Can you say papá again, baby?” you asked, tickling the bottom of Mariposa’s foot, but all she produced were more incoherent babbles.

“No, no, it’s time to rest that little genius brain. I bet she’ll say papá and mamá tomorrow,” Warren said. Your dinner mess was forgotten as the two of you walked down the hall to Mariposa’s nursery, getting her ready for bed together like you did every night.

Once she was in her crib, heavy eyelids dozing off toward sleep, the two of you crept back out into the hall, closing the door behind you. As it clicked closed, Warren wound his arms around you, head resting on your shoulder. You turned around in his arms, taking his face in your hands, thumbs rubbing circles on his cheeks.

“Guess we know who’s Mari’s favorite,” you whispered, beaming at him.

“No way,” Warren said seriously, “I’ve just been coaching her on how to say papá about a hundred times a day since she was born.”

You stifled a laugh at that, shaking your head. “She loves you so, so much, Warren. I love you so, so much. I love getting to watch you be such an amazing father for her.”

Warren’s eyes softened, his goofy grin sliding into something more serious at your words. “I’m only as good as I am because I have you by my side, you know that, right? You’re our glue, I’d be a mess without you. Even if things had been different, even if we never became parents together, I would be a mess without you.”

“I am way too tired and emotional for you to be saying things like that right now,” you joked with a watery laugh. “I love you, Warren. I’m so happy I get to be your glue.”

“I love you, too, mama,” he said, the grin returning to his face as he closed the gap between you, pressing his lips to yours.

tag list: @eonnyx @xleiaorgana

#daisy jones and the six #djats #warren rojas #warren rojas x reader #warren rhodes #warren rhodes x reader #eddie roundtree #eddie loving #graham dunne #camila dunne #julia dunne #karen sirko #karen karen #billy dunne

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mockerycrow · 3 months

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CROWWWW YOUR OC'S SOUND SO COOL!!!!

Macbeth is my personal favorite so far (I'm biased cause I'm Slavic hehe) he just sounds so complex!!! And from what you wrote, I can very much tell you put time into researching the mentality of Slavic men, and that friend of yours seems to know what they're talking about. Finally, Slavic representation is more than just Russian terrorists or Balkan gang leaders. You've got no idea how much I appreciate being able to see my culture in art and writing. So far, Macbeth reminds me of my father a little bit <3 Slavic culture is iften very overlooked when it comes to representation and we see things about us that are inaccurate, offensive, or just plain rude. Glad to see we're finally getting a bit more respect within other communities, especially in books and fanfiction!

Thank you so much for this Crow, you don't know how much it made my day. I feel so seen.

Share some more random little facts about your OC's if you'd like! I'd love to hear the niche little details, like who of the characters is a night owl and who's an early bird, I'd love to know who bickers the most often, who's the tallest and the shortest, what are the deeper dynamics in the group like etc etc. I wanna hear it all!!!!

Love you Crow!! And I'm so excited for the next Undercover installment too (no pressure to hurry up, I'm just fangirling lmaoo) <33

-🌓

I’M GONNA CRY!! I really appreciate your love for Macbeth (as well as my Undercover series!!) and I’m very excited to introduce all three of my ocs. My friend who has helped me with Macbeth is Ukrainian themself and I wanted to do them right with Macbeth. (love u pookie) One of the reasons why I created Macbeth is because I was doing research on my family lineage for my father!

As for heights, Macbeth is actually the tallest! He stands at 5’10” (177.8 cm), although Hamlet is only half an inch behind him. He’s 5’9.5” (176.5 cm). Mantis is a few inches shorter at 5’6” (167 cm).

I would like to think that Mantis is a night owl. She thrives in a private setting; don’t get me wrong, she works well with other people and is a key person in her team! But she prefers being alone or with one other person. She likes the silence as there’s no chaos. Though at times, the silence does spook her if she’s just come back from a mission. Remaining adrenaline gets her jumpy.

Macbeth is an Early Bird unwillingly. He’s always been an early bird since childhood, not exactly something he could help. He will wake up at 0430 on the dot without an alarm. If he does not want to be up early, expect him to take some sleep medication 💀 Macbeth isn’t exactly mad about this as it’s typical to wake up early in the military. He also gets a few mundane tasks done before his day officially starts. Macbeth enjoys being able to watch the sun rise whilst smoking a cigarette.

Hamlet.. he’s neither. He is the definition of “soldiers sleeping anywhere”. He does not like getting up in the slightest, so don’t be surprised when you wake him up to take next watch, he complains under his breath. If he had to pick his favorite time of day though, definitely sunset or just right after it due to how beautiful the sky looks!

Mantis knows four languages like I’ve mentioned, and she’s currently learning Ukrainian. She knows English (Native speaker), Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. Macbeth sits her down and helps her practice a bit, and he can’t help but chuckle under his breath when Mantis’ lips refuse to move the correct way and she speaks Ukrainian with a butchered accent. It’s much better than a lot of other American’s attempts but again, Ukrainian is an entirely different language than her native language, so she sounds a bit ridiculous. Hamlet knows English (native speaker), Mandarin, and Arabic! Macbeth grew up in Mykolaiv, Ukraine until he was fourteen, so he knows Ukrainian (native speaker), Russian, Belarusian, and English. The order of their languages are the order of which they’ve been learned!

Their dynamics? Hmm… Hamlet is definitely a loyal guard dog type. You’ll see this throughout the tempest series. Hamlet bickers. Doesn’t matter who it is. He’s always bickering. It’s often Mantis and Hamlet getting into it with Macbeth having to intervene, or it’s Hamlet and Macbeth bickering and Mantis wanting both of them to shut the fuck up 😭

i’m really bad at sharing things about ocs without direct questions so i’m accepting any questions!!

#call of duty #my ocs #cod ocs #crow answers

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andnowanowl · 3 months

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Since "Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation" is suspiciously not available in the US in the form of an e-book, I purchased a physical copy and wanted to share it here for anyone else also unable to get access.

EBTIHAJ BE'ERAT

Homemaker, 52

Born in Kafr Malek, West Bank

Interviewed in Kafr Malek, West Bank

We first visit Ebtihaj Be'erat at her house in the hilltop village of Kafr Malek in 2010. Her house is easy to find: a giant banner in honor of her son, Abdal Aziz, hangs against a whitewashed wall above red geraniums. Two years before our visit, just up the road from the house, Abdal Aziz was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. Inside the house, there is a room devoted to him, with pictures and plaques on the walls and more pictures piled on the floor.

Ebtihaj is a warm woman with oval frame glasses, a gold heart necklace, and deep dimples that appear when she smiles. Her name, in fact, means "joy." Yet, the death of her son is clearly still part of her everyday life. As we ask her about her childhood in Kafr Malek, her experiences during the First Intifada, and her family tree, her answers circle back again and again to the loss of her son and the day he was shot. Still, evidence of her five other children also covers the walls, including photos of them dancing in a well-known dance troupe, framed university degrees, and various awards. Throughout our interview, her house is bustling with family members and neighbors coming and going. And although she downplays her skill as a host, she offers us an impressive spread of food, including homemade bread, jam, pickles, as well as local eggs and herbs.

When we come back to the house two years later, the banner honoring Abdal Aziz has been moved further up the street to the place where he died. Ebtihaj is now able to tell the story of his death without being completely overcome with grief, and she's more willing to talk about the life that continues in his absence. Besides telling us of her son, Ebtihaj shares stories about the changes she remembers in her home village since the Six-Day War in 1967, a conflict that led to Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Though Ebtihaj and her family had the opportunity to join the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who emigrated from the West Bank following the Six-Day War, she decided to stay in Kafr Malek and raise her children in a Palestinian community.

OUR WEDDING PARTIES ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL

My name is Ebtihaj, and I'm from Kafr Malek, which is a very social village where everyone knows everyone else.¹ I was born in the spring of 1962.

All my family is from the village. My grandfather and my great-grandfather were born here. The people of this village have always been known for their hospitality, and anyone who comes to Kafr Malek loves it here. It's beautiful. We receive visitors with hospitality, male or female. We're more moderate than some nearby villages. We're more civilized. We're not like the other villages where a man can't enter a woman's house when she's alone. Our wedding parties are the most beautiful in the area because all of us wear traditional dresses, even the small girls. Also, many people in our village have lived in the United States or Latin America,

they can speak English or Spanish. I don't know the exact numbers, but approximately 20 to 40 percent of the people born in this village are living abroad at the moment, mostly in the U.S., but also in Colombia and Brazil. A number of families emigrated during the First Intifada, but they come back for visits.²

I was the sixth of seven children. I have four sisters and two brothers. My father worked for the post office in the village. It was his job to go to Ramallah and pick up the mail, and then to deliver it to everyone in Kafr Malek. He also had a second job as a butcher in the market. When I was a young child, Kafr Malek was surrounded by farms. Many villagers had farms on top of Al-Asur Hill behind the village, and many farmers grew grapes.

Then in 1967, Israeli soldiers invaded the village.³ I remember fleeing with all the other villagers to a grove of almond trees. Some villagers fled to their fields. My family lived under almond trees for two weeks while the war was going on, and I remember we each had just enough food and water rations to last two weeks.

Later that year, the Israeli military moved in and built a base on top of the hill. They cleared a lot of the farms on the hill and demolished the homes of some farmers as well. We got used to seeing soldiers in the village. There weren't any Jordanian policeman anymore, just Israeli soldiers. We got used to hearing about homes being raided as well. Soldiers would take men and boys in the middle of the night, from young children to the oldest men.

I met my husband when I was very young, when I was fifteen years old and he was twenty. He fell in love with me. He's my cousin, a relative from my mother's side.⁴ We were engaged that same year we met, and we married when I was seventeen. Nowadays, it doesn't happen like that. Mostly now, women wait until they finish university and then they get married. I was sad because I wanted to finish my studies. But my father told me, "No, you have to get married." I didn't even finish high school.

I moved into my in-laws' home right after our marriage in 1979. Before the war in 1967, my husband's family had farmed at the top of Al-Asur Hill. After the war, soldiers ordered his family out of their home and blew it up, so they moved to another house in the village. When I married my husband, he was still a farmer and also worked as a stone cutter.

In 1980 we had our first child, my daughter Maysa, when I was eighteen. By then I'd settled into my husband's home as a housewife. I did the housework along with my mother- and sisters-in-law, I cooked, and if any visitors came, I welcomed them. Over the next few years I had two more daughters and a son—Haifa, Rafa, and Fadi. Every day I would cook lunch for my children and for my husband. I'd buy my own groceries. And I'd tend the garden—we planted wheat and olives. During Eid, I'd make cookies, you know, ma'amoul.⁵ Everyone would ask for them.

During this time, in the early eighties, many villagers were leaving to live abroad. I had two older brothers and an older sister get visas to work in the United States, and my brothers encouraged our family to fill out the paperwork to do the same. There was more opportunity to work there, and more freedom. In the U.S. we wouldn't have to worry about soldiers coming to our house. So we filled out the paperwork and applied,and when we didn't get a visa the first year, we kept reapplying every year.

Finally, in 1986, my family was granted visas to live in the United States. But by this time, I had three daughters, and I wasn't sure I wanted to raise them in America. My sister had brought two daughters to the U.S., and they had ended up marrying foreigners. I wanted my daughters to grow up and marry Palestinians—hopefully, young men from the village. So we reconsidered it and decided to stay. My husband found work as a taxi driver in Ramallah, so he was able to support our family.

THE SOLDIERS FORBADE US TO LIGHT CANDLES

I gave birth to my middle son, Abdal Aziz, on December 5, 1987, in Ramallah, when the First Intifada had just broken out.⁶ He was born nine pounds, blond, and with green eyes. The nurse who was on shift, she held him and said to everyone, "Come and see the child from Kafr Malek. He is so beautiful." I named him Abdal Aziz after his grandfather—his father's father.

When I got out of the hospital, Israeli soldiers were closing the shops because they said that the Intifada was moving from Gaza to the West Bank. I couldn't even find a pharmacy to buy vitamins or a bottle, the basic things we needed with a new baby in the house. The soldiers imposed a curfew, and it was forbidden for anyone to be outside, even in our own yards, for over a month. We had to stay inside our houses, and we couldn't open a window to look outside. The soldiers even forbade us to light candles. If they saw the light of a candle in a house,they would come and break the windows. During this time we ate mostly bread, olive oil, and za'atar.⁷ When we were able to find other kinds of food, my mother-in-law would have to hide it well in the house, because if soldiers searched our home, they would know we had broken curfew if we had fresh food.

Sometimes they'd arrest someone every month or two, sometimes it seemed like every night. Checkpoints were set up, so we couldn't travel to the top of the hill anymore, where the base was, and there was only one entrance into and out of the village. Sometimes, depending on what was happening during the Intifada, they would set up a checkpoint at the main entrance of the village, and they wouldn't allow anyone to enter or leave except to go to neighboring villages. Even when someone was sick, or even if a pregnant woman was having a baby, they'd go to Taybeh, the next village, instead of to the hospital in Ramallah because when the soldiers set up the checkpoint, they wouldn't allow anyone to leave.⁸

All the men in the village had left their houses, because if the soldiers came in and saw a man in the house, they would sometimes beat him so badly. So all the men stayed in the fields, and they would go to Ramallah to look for food. During the night, they'd sneak home with food and basic supplies like sugar, and then go back to the fields.

My house is in the center of the city, so the soldiers would come often. Once, when my Abdal Aziz was two months old, I was sitting outside with him because I was cleaning the bread oven. My mother-in-law was at a neighbor's house and my husband was in the fields. A few soldiers saw me from the street, and they chased me into my house. I ran into the kitchen where the rest of my children were at the time—I was holding Abdal Aziz in my arms. The soldiers had these batons, and one soldier tried to hit me with one. I moved my head just in time to avoid the blow, and he struck the refrigerator instead. But he was aiming for my head. All my kids were screaming and crying, including Abdal Aziz in my arms. I think that made the soldiers back off. My children protected me.

Then the soldiers closed the kitchen door on me and locked me inside with my kids. They left the key on the outside of the door, and we were locked in the kitchen for around two hours until my mother-in-law came back. At that time, there weren't any mobile phones like today, not even house phones. If my mother-in-law hadn't been at the neighbor's house, she would have been with me inside, and who knows how long it would have been before someone unlocked the door. When she returned and let me out of the kitchen, I just collapsed. I was so scared, I fainted. She didn't know what to do, and there wasn't any way to call a doctor or nurse. So she got the idea of throwing open all the windows and turning on a lamp in the window. It attracted the attention of the soldiers, and when more came to see what was going on, she begged them to get me a nurse or doctor. That was the only way she had to get me medical attention.

I believe Abdal Aziz always remembered that day. He had an image of it burned in his mind. At two months, he was too young to form memories. But the memory was like an inspiration from God, at least that's what I think.

WHAT HE FELT THROUGH THE STONE

As a child, Abdal Aziz was unique. There wasn't anyone like him. He was kind and beautiful. Abdal Aziz had a lot of friends, and he was a leader among them from a young age. Part of it was that he was just so affectionate and generous. I remember he us to come up to me when was washing dishes or something and give me a big hug. He was the same way with his friends. If one of his friends mentioned that he saw a shirt in the market that he wanted, Abdal Aziz would save his money until he could buy the shirt for his friend. I had another child, Muhammed, in 1990, and Muhammed always looked up to Abdal Aziz. Abdal Aziz was thirteen at the start of the Second Intifada in 2000.

During the Second Intifada, the Israeli military closed the village for a month, and we couldn't leave our homes. They even cut the electricity and water for a month. When the soldiers came, we'd close everything, all the windows, and we'd stay inside. I can remember two occasions when we forgot to close a window, and teargas got inside the home. We felt like we were suffocating.

Abdal Aziz was born when the First Intifada started, so it was in his blood to be active.⁹ But Abdal Aziz wasn't affiliated with any political party. He wore one bracelet that said "Fatah," another one that said "PFLP," and another one that said "Hamas," all together on one hand.¹⁰ I used to ask him, "Which one are you?" He'd say, "I'm Palestinian." That's another reason why everyone loved him.

Ever since he was a kid, he always talked about how much he wanted to throw stones at the jeeps and tanks when they passed our house, to drive them away. The kids don't have any weapons to defend their country, they only have stones—a stone versus a tank. I knew my son loved to throw stones at soldiers when they came at night, and I knew that he was in danger. The soldiers arrested so many teenagers and they injured others. My cousin is now spending twenty-five years in jail for throwing stones, and another one was put in jail for fifteen years. One of my neighbors has been in jail for eighteen years now, just for throwing stones at the soldiers.

The soldiers usually come into the village at two or three a.m. That is their normal time. Every time they enter the village, the youth have an agreement to start whistling to let everyone know. It's a signal for others when they are on the streets to go back home so the soldiers don't catch them and beat them. I'm always so afraid whenever I start to hear whistling.

There were many nights when I would hear whistling, wake up, and put on my clothes to go out and search for Abdal Aziz. I would go to his friends and ask them where he was. When Abdal Aziz came home in the early morning, I'd go hug him as soon as I saw him on the stairs outside of the house and tell him, "Thank God, you're okay and nothing has happened to you." I would make him sit and talk to me because he wouldn't listen. I used to tell him, "When the soldiers come, they have armor, they have weapons, and they are much stronger than us." I asked him if throwing stones would make them leave the village. He always said, "This is our village. Why did they come to our village?" I would ask him, "Can you forbid the soldiers or the tanks from coming into the village?" I would tell him that if they killed him, I would go crazy. He would say that if a patrol came into the village and he didn't throw a stone at it, it would hurt his conscience. He wanted to protect his country. He wanted to express what he felt through the stone, that this is our country and not theirs. I was angry with him because I knew that something bad would happen to him.

Once, I left the house and all my neighbors were asking me, "Where are you going? The patrol is near." And I told them, "Let them shoot me. I want to go find Abdal Aziz." He was at the neighbor's house. I stood in the street and called to him, and I told him, "If you don't come to the house now, I will go to the patrol and make them shoot me." If they saw anyone at night in the village, there was a chance they would shoot.

It didn't matter whether it was a woman or a man. He told me, "I'm coming, I'm coming," and he came back with me. We snuck home safely. He came back with me, but when I went to sleep, he snuck out again.

WHY DO YOU THINK EVERYONE WANTS PALESTINE?

It was difficult living in Kafr Malek during the Second Intifada. I was so worried about my children. But still, I wasn't tempted to move.

In the summer of 2002, I visited my older brothers, who were still in the United States. They'd been there since the early 1980s and were living in Chicago, I loved America, I loved the people there. I liked how organized everything was in the city. In general, the people were welcoming to me. My brothers' neighbors were very nice. And people are free there. You don't have soldiers coming into your house at two a.m. and ordering you out into the streets.

But Palestine is so beautiful—why do you think everyone wants Palestine? When I was in Chicago, I remember telling my brother, "I like America, but I haven't seen anything in the U.S. that I like as much as sitting on the front steps of my own home when there's a breeze, or being able to go into the yard and pick fresh grapes and figs." So my brother went out and bought me some grapes and figs, all the things I had named. But they didn't taste the same to me. I didn't like the grapes at all! Everything was imported, nothing fresh. I was supposed to stay in Chicago for four months, but I could only make it for a month and a half. I was homesick. Also, it was so hot!

A few years later, in 2006, my husband ended up going to the States to work with some family and neighbors who had a store in Miami. My husband would ask a lot about Abdal Aziz when he called home. He didn't ask about the other sons as much as he asked about Abdal Aziz.He was worried. When he talked to Abdal Aziz on the phone, my husband would preach to him, "Calm down, don't throw stones."

It was hard to be alone with my children, but by that time my sons were all grown-ups and they were working. Only Abdal Aziz and Muhammed, the youngest, were still at school. My three daughters were already married. Abdal Aziz finished high school in 2007, did the tawjihi exams,¹¹ and wanted to apply for Al-Quds Open University,¹² He didn't like school so much, but he liked everything else: soccer, dabka,¹³ and all his other after-school activities. After the tawjihi, he spent one year not studying, but he wanted to eventually study business I have a cousin who runs a supermarket, and Abdal Aziz spent a lot of afternoons helping him out there, learning about how to run a small business.

I FELT I WOULD LOSE HIM SOMEDAY

Abdal Aziz was a soccer player, and he was the goalkeeper for the Al-Bireh Institute team in Ramallah. He was also a coach in Kafr Malek for younger boys. In early October 2008, he was twenty years old and getting his passport ready, because his team had an opportunity to go play in Europe.

During that time, Abdal Aziz was still going out every night to be with his friends. On the night of October 16, I went to sleep at around eleven-thirty. Abdal Aziz called at one a.m. He had a habit of asking me when I answered the phone, "How are you, Ma?"

I told him, "I'm going to sleep now. Do you need anything?" He told me, "I'm coming with friends, so please make us some dinner to eat?" I told him, "I don't sleep very well because of you, and you want me to prepare dinner for you now?" So he asked me to speak with Muhammed, and he told his younger brother to prepare dinner for him, all his favorite things. My room is just beside the kitchen, so when Abdal Aziz came back with his friends, he'd close the door so they wouldn't bother me, and they'd sit outside to eat dinner.

Still, that night I heard him come in with his friends, so I got up and put on my dress. I looked at him through the door eating dinner with his friends outside. I looked at my watch, and it was around three a.m. I thought, It's late. Abdal Aziz won't go out again. His friends will leave, and he'll go to sleep in his room. And because I was comfortable that Abdal Aziz was at home, I went back to bed.

Not long afterward, I woke up again and opened the window. Although it was October, it was still hot. When I opened the window, I realized my son Muhammed was outside, crying and calling for a car. He told me that there had been a shooting. I went to Abdal Aziz's room and saw that he wasn't there. I put on my clothes and started screaming that Abdal Aziz had died. I knew then. I felt it immediately that he was dead. My heart dropped.

I went to our neighbors' house. I told Abu Adel, our neighbor, that Abdal Aziz died. He told me no, but I insisted that he was the one that had been shot. I told my neighbor's son to take me to the hospital because he had a car, but he reassured me that it wasn't Abdal Aziz who was injured. But I insisted. I wanted to be with my son. That was that. My son Fadi showed up at the house, and he and Muhammed tried to comfort me and told me it wasn't Abdal Aziz. I told them, "No, it is your brother. It is Abdal Aziz." They told me that Abdal Aziz was with his friends, and I told them that if that was so, to bring him to me. Then some of Abdal Aziz's friends came and told me that he'd run away with some of the others. I asked if there were any more soldiers in the village, and they told me there was a patrol nearby. And so I asked them, "Why did Abdal Aziz run away? Abdal Aziz doesn't run away if there's a soldier in the village, so I don't believe you."

When my three daughters heard that someone had been killed, they came running to my house with their husbands, asking, "Where is he?" They too felt that it was Abdal Aziz who had been killed. The women from our neighborhood came to my house for an hour and tried to calm me down, to tell me that it wasn't Abdal Aziz, or that he was just injured. I told them, "No, it Abdal Aziz. I know that he is dead." Then finally someone else from the village came to the house and told me, "The thing that you've suspected is true." She had witnessed the scene.

In a few moments, a huge crowd showed up at the house, and they were all crying because they loved Abdal Aziz, and he was not there anymore. No one would take me to see him at the hospital because they felt would be a shock for me. Finally, at around ten a.m., the Red Crescent ambulance brought his body back to the house.¹⁴

I learned the story from Abdal Aziz's friends who had been with him that night. They said that after I went to sleep, Abdal Aziz got a phone call from a friend who told him that a patrol of soldiers was coming. Abdal Aziz used to stand on a particular roof and throw stones from there, so that's where they both went to wait for the soldiers. But on this night, the soldiers were down below in the garden hiding between the trees, waiting for him. He was with his friend on the roof, and when they threw the first stone, the soldiers opened fire on them. His friend was shot in the shoulder, and Abdal Aziz was shot in the leg.

Abdal Aziz's friend told him, "We're being ambushed! Let's hand ourselves over to the soldiers." Abdal Aziz's reply was, "I would rather die than hand myself over." Because Abdal Aziz was injured in his leg, he couldn't run, but his friend was able to run away. He wanted to help Abdal Aziz, but he couldn't. According to my son's friends, when the soldiers came up to the roof and saw that it was Abdal Aziz, they kept him there. The bullet had entered the back of his left leg and come out the front. They left him to bleed, and they wouldn't allow a doctor to see him. They surrounded the area, and only after he died did they let the Red Crescent ambulance come and take him. The neighbors all came outside to check on him, to help him, but the soldiers told them, "If you come near us, we will shoot you, too."

He didn't die among his family or his friends. That's what hurts me the most. That's the most painful thing. The soldiers handed him over to the ambulance with the cuffs on his hands.

The day after Abdal Aziz died, my husband was in a café in Miami, playing cards. A relative had gone there to tell him the news, but before he even said anything, my husband saw the look in his eyes and told him, "Stop. I know Abdal Aziz just died." He came back to Palestine as soon as he could—he was home within two weeks. For two days after he returned, I couldn't speak to my husband. He did all the talking. And then he decided to stay in Kafr Malek.

The boy who was with Abdal Aziz survived. He's married now, his wife is pregnant. That night he ran away, he was treated for his injury, and he was arrested and put in jail for two years. Many of my son's other friends have been arrested since. They were brought to trial on so made-up charges and all sentenced to five and a half years. I wish they some had arrested Abdal Aziz and not killed him.

It was what God wanted. I always advised my son to stay at home, not to endanger himself. I would tell him that I felt I would lose him someday. Two weeks before his death, Abdal Aziz was with his friends in a car and he was hanging out the window. It was the night of Eid.¹⁵ And the guys told him, "Come inside, you don't want to get killed on a holy night." He told them, "I won't be killed. I won't die like this. I will die a martyr." He knew.

I'VE DECIDED TO LIVE

If you ask anyone in the village, they can tell you about Abdal Aziz. The day he died, seven satellite channels came to the village here to document what was going on. When they brought him in the hearse, there were hundreds of cars following behind. His funeral was so big. I didn't expect so many people.

After a death, we have three days for people to come and pay their respects, but for Abdal Aziz it took three weeks. His friends from all over came to the house and called me to go outside. We have a tradition where you kiss a person's hand and hold it to your own forehead as a sign of respect. One by one, they all kissed my hand, held it to their foreheads, and told me they were my sons now instead of Abdal Aziz. Even now, they always come visit me, and I go visit them. There was also a bus of girls who were friends of Abdal Aziz from the dabka team, and they came crying and searching for Abdal Aziz's mother.

They even put a tent near the hall in the village center, and thousands of people came. The student senate at Birzeit University suspended classes because of Abdal Aziz's death.¹⁶ Usually they don't suspend classes if someone dies, not even a student at the university. Even though he wasn't a student, everyone knew Abdal Aziz, even the teachers, and they put upposters with his photo inside the university. One year after his death, one of his friends had to present his graduation thesis, and he invited me to come. I went to the university and everyone, all the students were saying, "That's Abdal Aziz's mother. That's Abdal Aziz's mother." I didn't know what to do—to cry, or to feel proud, or to smile.

When someone loses a son, what do you expect? I raised him for twenty-one years, and I used to look at him when he went out and think to myself, Is it possible that this is my son? And I lost him overnight. And he was so beautiful, my son. He is now with his God in heaven. Whenever I go outside now, there's a banner with his photo on it hanging in the place where he died. Whenever I see it, I feel guilty because I couldn't hold him and hug him during the last minutes before he died.

After he died, life was complicated. For one whole year, I didn't sleep at night. I drove everyone crazy after his death, especially at two or three a.m. It's the time when Abdal Aziz died, and I would always be awake then. I'd wake up and feel like I needed to leave the house. I either went to one of my daughters' houses or even my cousins. I was so tired, and my daughters were so worried about me.

I went to the doctor, and he found my blood pressure to be at very dangerous levels. He told me, "You will have a heart attack if you continue living like this." It was so scary. For three whole years, they gave me sedative shots, sometimes every day and sometimes twice a week.

Since Abdal Aziz died, I stopped doing embroidery. I used to make traditional dresses, but now I've stopped. I don't see 100 percent, and I need good vision to embroider. I used to sell the dresses to help my husband, as our financial situation now is very hard. My younger son, Mohammad, studies journalism at Birzeit University. He wants to continue and get his master's, and Birzeit University is more expensive than the other universities. My husband only works as a taxi driver. Even the taxi that he drives belongs to someone else. He only covers the university tuition and Muhammed's daily expenses. I can't ask my other son for help because he wants to build his future. My oldest son is a teacher. Now he should start building a new house, but there are no good jobs. He wants to get married, but it all depends on the money.

My second daughter once came and told me that Abdal Aziz is alive. In Islam, in our religion, we consider martyrs to be alive in heaven. She told me, "You are crying every day for Abdal Aziz, and he's only one person, and he's alive with God." She told me that there are fifteen people in our family, including the cousins and the grandchildren. She asked, "Do you want to die and leave us all too?" Since then, I've decided to live my life for my daughters and sons who are still alive, and my grief is only in my heart now.

Sometimes one of my daughters comes and sees my eyes are red and asks me if I was crying, and I deny it and say, "No, why would I cry?" I do it to make them feel stronger because they were affected by the death of their brother also. It's been four years now, and I feel every day that it was like yesterday, and I always see him and always remember him. In Palestine, we often say that problems that start so heavy begin to disappear with time. But this weight stays. It's not fading. I am honored that my son is a hero who defended his land. He defended his country and his village. But I don't want my other sons to get killed. Abdal Aziz is enough.

---

Footnotes

¹ Kafr Malek is a village of about 3,000 people located nine miles northeast of Ramallah.

² The First Intifada was an uprising throughout the West Bank and Gaza against Israeli military occupation. It began in December 1987 and lasted until 1993. Intifada in Arabic means "to shake off."

³ 1967 was the year of the Six-Day War that culminated in Israel occupying the West Bank.

⁴ Marriage between cousins was once considered an ideal match in Palestine and throughout the Middle East, especially in rural areas.

⁵ Ma'amoul are shortbread pastries filled with dates or nuts and pressed in a wooden mold with an intricate design, and are commonly made during Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha, the major Muslim holidays. Palestinian Christians also make them for Easter.

⁶ The protests, clashes with Israeli military, boycotts, and other acts of civil disobedience that marked the beginning of the First Intifada started in December 1987. Most of the organized action began on December 9, two days after Abdal Aziz's birth.

⁷ Za'atar is the name of both a spice similar to thyme that grows wild in Palestine and a blend of spices. Za'atar is a staple of local cooking in Palestine and much of the Middle East.

⁸ Taybeh is a neighboring Christian village of 1,500 people about one mile away from Kafr Malek. It's locally famous for a brewery that makes Palestine's only beer.

⁹ In Palestine, saying someone is "active" is shorthand for saying the person is involved in protests, to throwing stones, to more militant activity.

¹⁰ Farah, PFLP, and Hamas are political parties within Palestine.

¹¹ An exit exam for high school.

¹² Al-Quds Open University is a mixed on-site and distance-learning university system with campuses in the West Bank, Gaza, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. There is also a separate university system in the West Bank called Al-Quds University, which isn't affiliated with Al-Quds Open University.

¹³ Dabka is a traditional Palestinian dance.

¹⁴ From the glossary -

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement: A group of international humanitarian organizations founded in 1863 with the purpose of assisting victims of disasters and providing developmental aid to strengthen communities in crisis. The movement is made up of three distinct organizations: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which safeguards human rights in conflict zones; the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) which coordinates relief assistance missions around the globe; and National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which address humanitarian needs and are organized on the national level. The Palestine Red Crescent Society is one of the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. It was formed in 1968 and has over 4,000 employees and 20,000 volunteers. Because the Palestinian Authority administers only a patchwork of territory within the West Bank, the Palestine Red Crescent Society provides some essential services to Palestinian citizens, including ambulance service and some medical care.

¹⁵ Eid Al-Fitr is a major feast that marks the end of the month of Ramadan.

¹⁶ Birzeit University is one of the most prestigious universities in Palestine. It's located just outside Ramallah, not far from Kafr Malek.

#palestine speaks #palestinian voices #book exerpt #palestine #strike for palestine #part 7 of 16 #i couldn't find a picture of ebtihaj or abdal aziz

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sir-elyan · 3 years

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there's likely a video somewhere out there of jensen ackles as dean winchester saying something akin to "me too, cas" and the day that i see that video will be the day that i cease to exist

#it wouldnt be exactly 'and i you cas' because thats #not how translations work #and also because english butchers the beauty of spanish #BUT #ANYWAYS #I'LL DIE #JENSEN RELEASE THE TAPES #spn #destiel #deancas #supernatural

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i-am-bitterly-jittery · 3 years

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Dilecti et Amantes

I’ve thought of a concept that is (in my opinion) amazing, but I don’t actually have much of a plot to go with it… so here’s what I’ve got so far

Warnings: mentions of a murdered teenager, mentions of a fear of being murdered (both minor, one paragraph and then one sentence later on), a probable butchering of Latin since I don’t know it and I just used google translate

~~~START~~~

“Soulmates”, in Virgil’s opinion, was too romantic a word for the dilecti and amantes (though to be fair, not nearly as romantic as literally being called “beloveds” and “lovers” in Latin).

Everyone had writing on their skin, writing that belonged to other people; those other people were called your dilecti. Everything your dilecti wrote on themselves would appear on your skin, though in that particular dilectus’s color. People had many dilecti; the least Virgil had ever heard of was five, with the most being theorized to be close to a hundred (though with that many dilecti it was hard to count), but most people had between ten and forty dilecti each.

If you were one of your dilectus’s dilecti, then the two of you would be considered amantes (whether you were actual lovers or not), but it wasn’t very common to find one of your dilecti, and it was even less common to find an amantes.

As far as Virgil could tell, there wasn’t any rhyme or reason for who your dilecti were, and even less for whether or not you were amantes. There wasn’t necessarily any particular chemistry, or bond. No matter how much society tried to romanticize the writing, there wasn’t anything beautiful behind it, just chance.

When Virgil was ten, a local teenager went missing after he’d written too much information about himself on his skin. Two weeks later he’d shown up slain. He’d been the dilectus of a man much older than him who’d been enraged to find that he and the teenager weren’t amantes and murdered him.

Virgil was extremely wary of what he wrote on himself after that.

Virgil himself had eighteen dilecti and had never met any of them. Several of them clearly spoke English, but most of them wrote in different languages, some Virgil could identify and some he couldn’t. Dark pink, Light pink, Blood orange, Lilac, and Teal all wrote solely in English; Red, Dark green, and Light green all wrote in Spanish (though Dark green occasionally wrote in English as well, so they were likely bilingual); Dark blue and Magenta wrote in what Virgil was pretty sure was Chinese; Brown wrote in French, and it took Virgil a while, but he eventually realized that Yellow wrote in French too, just they wrote everything backwards; White was Korean; Gray was probably Italian; and Light Blue, Orange, Black, and Gold all wrote in languages Virgil couldn’t positively identify.

Red wrote a lot, but Virgil wasn’t sure what they were saying. Dark blue wrote a lot too, usually in Chinese, but sometimes they wrote small notes in a variety of languages, leaving Virgil uncertain if they actually knew that many languages, or if they just looked up specific phrases. Light blue wrote the same phrase on their arm every day, Virgil had copied it down, but since the language didn’t use the Latin alphabet, he wasn’t sure how to figure out what it said. Brown liked to doodle on their thighs. Gold wrote almost solely on their feet. Light green liked to spice up what they wrote, and occasionally drew semi-disturbing drawings on their stomach.

The English writers were much easier to understand. Dark pink was forgetful and wrote themself quick notes on the back of their hand. Teal wrote grocery lists on their forearm. Light pink wrote different motivational phrases every day, though Virgil wasn’t sure if they did it for the benefit of their dilecti or themself. Blood orange, Virgil thought, knew Dark pink because they often wrote reminders that perfectly aligned beneath Dark pink’s notes (writing to a specific dilectus was considered a faux pas as many other people would see your writing without the context, but Blood orange didn’t seem to care, and their notes would look normal by themselves anyway).

Virgil wrote as little as possible (though not writing anything at all was also a faux pas). Mostly he just wrote down page numbers for homework assignments and mapped out the lines on his hands. He wasn’t sure what color his writing showed up as, and he didn’t want to know, because knowing meant he met someone he was the dilectus of, and that was a situation he’d prefer to avoid at all costs. (And yeah, maybe he was afraid of being kidnapped and murdered, so sue him!)

~~~END~~~

Once I think of a plot to go with this concept it’ll be all over for all y’all

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@royalty-of-all-things-snuggly @pixelated-pineapple

#sanders sides #ts sanders sides #virgil sanders #my writing #thursday writes #sanders sides au #moxiety #analogical #anxceit #prinxiety #intruxiety #lamp/calm #i don’t know yet

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newtonsheffield · 3 years

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Hello again!!!! I'm the Spanish girl back in here!

Firstly, I'd like to send you my best wishes for this tough week of work, and I bet we're going to miss you around here this week. But duty calls! And, look, how many people can say they've got a whole week for relaxing after a week of work? 😌 (Perhaps I've misunderstood the whole thing; I've read your posts quite quick and I've understood sth different to what you wanted to say lol)

Well, what can I say with one of the last prompts you have gifted to us...? Kate, Anthony (and his Spanish!!!!!!) and Spain; you got me there. 😂 I even cried the famous "Ole!" when I read all of it (curious note: not all Spaniards use the expression "ole" in daily contexts; it is more like a regional expression that became worldwide famous bc of several reasons that are too long to post here, lol) and I think it's needless to say I loved it... isn't it?

And, I LOVED a lot Edwina's POV and story (well, I've loved everything you have posted and gifted to us, but Eddie has a special place in my heart)! I don't know, but sometimes I get the impression that, in romantic literature, relationships between sisters are not addressed at all and kinda force them to be friends (if they're not rivals... which I find stupid, tbh), not really deepening in the bond between them. Like, they're sisters and they behave more like "my next door neighbour and friend to whom sometimes I'm distant bc life happens" instead of "this person and I share much more than many people can imagine that's beyond friendship and she's more important than anybody else" -idk if this makes sense anymore... I rewrote it a couple of times bc I got the impression I can't express my idea very well 😂-. And that's something I think both of you, JQ and yourself, have achieved and gifted to all of us! We see Edwina and Kate as sisters: they fight, they tease the other, they can't stand each other sometimes, but always, ALWAYS, they care for and love the other just as sisters do. Because of this, I think TVWLM is one of my favourite books in this genre: they give us a two fantastic love stories, not only between a -heterosexual- couple but also between sisters; which is as important as any other kind of relationship.

After my TED Talk (sorry if it's been too much... 😅), I cannot help but imagine an escapade between Anthony and Kate (sans children) and Matthew and Edwina (oh, Matthew... I love you) to Spain just for Anthony, in his stupid one-side battle against Matthew (I love this, tbh; it's sooooo fun 😂), demonstrate Matthew he can speak fluently another language... Just for Matthew be oblivious to this and enjoy a little escapade to Spain with his girlfriend and her family. 😂

Anyways; I hope you're alright and, again, I wish you all the best for this week.

Besos!!! 🥰 (Spanish equivalent for the "Love!" farewell expression; it means "kisses")

Hola! You’re back again! And I’m so glad!

I do have a week off once I finish work tomorrow (Saturday)!! Very Exciting! I have a scarf to knit, and lots of writing to do so that’s very exciting.

Oh Anthony on a Spanish beach in tiny little flamingo shorts? Ole! indeed! That is a curious note, I literally love learning things about other cultures and languages so if anyone wants to share a curious note about their culture, hit me up! I will in turn tell you about the curious culture of The Land Down under, and our propensity to butcher the English language!

I agree, Sister relationships are a very curious thing in media. I’m not a huge fan of very contentious relationships between sisters, I’m not saying they don’t exist in real life, they definitely do, I just think having them as constant rivals is exhausting. And Yes! I Love the relationship between Edwina and Kate very much because I see it as a mirror of my relationship with my own sister. My sister drives me more insane than any other person on this planet. We fight, we bicker, I get absolutely enraged when she steals the last property I need for a set in Monopoly, and yet, She is my favourite person. She can say whatever she wants about me, but were anyone else to? It’s fight on sight. I’ll be honest, that all I’m doing is basing their relationship in these fics on my own with my sister. Nothing special!

Okay! Here we go! Anthony and Kate + Goose and Edwina +Spain

Kate Bridgerton was many, many things, but she liked to think an idiot, was not one of them. And so, when Anthony had said, in a tone she was sure he thought was casual. “I think we deserve a holiday, you’ve been working very hard to grow the little broad bean after all and your sister and her little gander should celebrate their engagement.” She had known exactly what he was up to. And she wasn’t really sure why she played along along with it. Perhaps something in her thrived on the chaos she knew Anthony would would create, perhaps part of her just really wanted a decent paella. Surely it didn’t matter, the result was the same: Kate fixed an innocent expression on her face and said “Where did you have in mind?”

And so, surprise, surprise, here she was: back on a beach in Spain. She had to admit, eyeing Anthony appreciatively as he paddled demonstratively in the shallow water, his plan had its merits. though thus far his attempts had been... unsuccessful at best. Matthew Bagwell seemed absolutely thrilled to be in Spain, on holiday with his fiancée, giving them helpful facts he knew about the architecture as they walked through the city, a wide smile on his face, Anthony practically purple when he corrected a fact Anthony himself had said. “Do you speak Spanish, Goose?” Anthony had said dryly in the hotel lobby shortly after they’d arrived. And Kate had rolled her eyes at Anthony, though Matthew was not paying attention. He had his arms wrapped tightly around Edwina’s waist, whispering something in her ear that made her nose crinkle in delight, the sapphire of her engagement ring glinting in the sunlight. And the beautiful picture they made gave Kate’s heart a little stutter. Anthony tutted. “Matt!” He said sharply, getting the man’s attention, Matthew’s glasses slipping down his nose as his head shot upwards in surprise. “Do you speak Spanish?” Edwina was rolling her eyes now. And Matthew, for his part was completely unbothered “oh, no. Sorry Mate, might have to lean on your pretty heavily this week.” He said, and Kate caught the smug smile on Anthony’s face and bit back a groan Damnit Matthew. “I’m pretty fluent in French, German and Mandarin though!” Matthew said smiling happily, turning back towards Edwina, completely oblivious to the scowl Anthony tossing his way. “Of course you fucking are.” He muttered, fixing Kate with an irritated glare as a laugh escaped her!

The water surely must be a little cool in early October but Anthony showed no signs of it, Beckoning Kate into the water. She groaned and made her way towards him, laughing happily as he tugged her in, his hand resting on her stomach, still no sign of her pregnancy. “Is he watching?” Anthony whispered in her ear as he wrapped his arms around her waist, spinning her through the water So she had a brief image of her sister smiling brightly at her fiancée who appeared to be... bless him building a sandcastle.

“No. He’s not.” Kate said batting her husband’s hands away irritatedly as he scowled. “Are you really trying to look more in love than they are?” Kate scoffed, disbelief at her husband’s idiocy rising with in her. Anthony looked indignant. “No! A man can’t take an interest in his wife now? Very poor show Mrs. Bridgerton.” He said, but his eyes, darted towards the shore at the last second. “Oh I cannot believe you! You’re absolutely manic!” She replied as Anthony attempted to pull her back towards him, Kate putting up very little fight as she tumbled against. him, his voice hot in her ear. “Insufferable I hear.” Kate scoffed. “Ugh! If Anyone’s insufferable it’s him!”

Kate turned to follow Anthony’s gaze to find Matthew waving at them, grinning broadly, completely unbothered. And Kate couldn’t keep from laughing as Anthony went on another muttered tirade.

Besos!

#bridgerton and sons au #kathony #anthony x kate #edwina x Bagwell #edwina x matthew #matthew goose bagwell #anthony bridgerton #kate sheffield #kate sharma #edwina sheffield #edwina sharma #goose is a cutie #the ridiculous rivalry between anthony and goose #molly’s asks and answers

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direwolf-summer · 3 years

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hiiiii! okay so not to be creepy but of course I checked your reblog of my answer about Spanish nicknames and the Marauders - and now I really wanna read your opinions about the Chinese version, so if you don't mind sharing it???? <3

Haha tysm I’m really flattered that you checked my tags in the reblog, V! I’m glad to see you talking about the Spanish translation of HP because translation has always been one of my biggest passions. I’ve done some professional translating here and there, but mostly I translate wolfstar fics from English to Chinese (not to embarrass myself here but I actually hold official Chinese-English translator certificate aka CATTI which means technically I can earn a living in translation if I want but hey, the only right way to use it is to apply myself in translating wolfstar fics right?). To my knowledge HP is probably the most translated books in the world other than Bible, so it would be fun if native speakers of different languages can gather together and compare notes!

Before we start, it should be noted that this is only the mandarin (simplified Chinese) version translated by Ma Aixin & Ma Ainong. There also exists a traditional Chinese version, and although I know most of the characters’ names and curses through indirect means I have never actually read the books, so I cannot in good conscience make a fair judgement. Friends from Taiwan and HongKong, the floor is all yours! @greywolfandmoon 😘

So, let’s start from the good things, shall we? I think it is fair to say that the simplified Chinese version of HP is overall well translated: the translator is a pair of sisters experienced in translating children’s books, the prose is plain but engaging enough for younger readers, and some of the proper nouns are translated quite ingeniously, if I do say so myself. For example, the name Diagon Alley is translated into 对角巷, preserving both the phonetics and the meaning, which is almost impossible in most cases and is therefore quite remarkable.

This is the thing with English-Chinese translation: because the two languages are so far away from each other in the language family tree, most of the time when you translate a proper noun (like a character’s name or the name of a place) you can only choose to preserve one thing: either how it sounds like, or what it means. That is why we Chinese readers never had the “aha” moment when Tom Riddle revealed to Harry that he was, in fact, Voldemort, about which I’m forever bitter. The general practice for translating a character’s name into Chinese is based on how it’s pronounced, but due to the multitude of Chinese characters under the same pronunciation, it is a test of the translator’s capability and imagination to choose the best one that can embody at least some of the meanings. Fortunately for the more common names like James and Peter, the Xinhua News Agency has published a reference list.

Sirius and Remus, on the other hand, fall into the more unfortunate category because their names are too unusual. 😂 Sirius is particularly unlucky (sorry handsome) because when his name first appeared (in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) it was written as “young Sirius Black”, so the translator thought, oh, it must the Junior one then, and went on to translate it into 小天狼星·布莱克, which literally means “junior celestial wolf star” - yeah we had wolfstar right there. 🤣 But it doesn’t make any sense to translate “Sirius” literally but “Black” phonetically. And for the record, Sirius is the only Black who has this kind of special treatment. The other Black family members, despite all sharing the weird posh naming tradition, were translated phonetically. I mean, we didn’t see Regulus’s name translated as 轩辕十四 (xuān yuán fourteen) and Bellatrix as 参宿五 (shēn xiù five), did we 🤷‍♀️

The only other character whose name was translated weirdly was Peter Pettigrew - his family name was translated as 小矮星 (junior dwarf star). Don’t ask me where the star comes from it only exists to make Sirius’s Chinese name less weird I guess

Annnnd on to the Marauders! *drumrolls*

In the simplified Chinese version, Prongs was 尖头叉子 (pointed prongs - ok fair), Wormtail was 虫尾巴 (surprise surprise -worm tail), Padfoot was 大脚板 (Big Paws), and Moony was 月亮脸 (moon face). Personally I wasn’t very pleased with this translation but I admit I couldn’t do better myself. I think my biggest issue, however, was that they completely erased the concept of the “marauders”, referring to the “Marauders’ Map” as 活点地图 (Moving Dots Map) instead. This is absolute scandal - how can you slaughter my babes’ intellectual property rights like that? And the beautiful alliteration was butchered in the process as well 😔

Honourable mention of some of my favourite names:

- Cho Chang 秋·张 (Autumn Zhang. The melancholy and maturity of Autumn just fits her character so much, no I don’t accept criticism)

- Hermione 赫敏 (赫 means remarkable, and 敏 means quick in mind. My cousin has 敏 in her name too!)

- Gringotts 古灵阁 (Ancient Souls Temple - to me a native Chinese speaker it sounds very mysterious and very splendid)

- Flourish & Blotts 丽痕书店 (beautiful trace bookshop - I just love the ring of it)

#welcome to my ted talk #hp #meta?#translation

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youneedasoultraveller · 3 years

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Is Nicky the only one headcanoned by people as bad with languages or are Nile and Booker seen the same way too (Andy is of course excluded from that due to her age and Joe is universally depicted as skilled with languages) ? I would expect Nile to be seen as bad with languages due to the American education system but it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Hello! Post-response me would like to apologise once again for the length of this post :(

I have personally not found a single fic where either Booker or Nile were depicted bad with languages; at most I found fics where Nile cannot speak languages other than English yet and you have the rest of the Guard routinely teaching her this and that idiom.

So, no, in my experience the only one that I saw people actively headcanon as bad at languages is Nicolò. Even though exactly as you point our if we want to go by stereotypes the one that should have been hc’d as such should have been Nile precisely because the large majority of Anglos are monolingual and the way languages are taught in their educational systems is horrendous to say the least (I will never forget my experiences studying Arabic in a Canadian university).

As it stands, Nile is shown using a couple of words of Pashtu, and if I remember correctly it is mentioned that she speaks Spanish in her presentation card, but if it’s the average American knowledge of Spanish “mi casa es su casa” then I would not call that speaking it. But these are just suppositions :)

So canon doesn’t give us much, that we know. And this is where headcanons come in. Like I was saying, usually people would not write Nile as multilingual but as someone who is in the process of learning several languages.

No one is indicated that she is bad at it, although if you ask pratically anyone in the world they will tell you that Americans and Brits are the worst at both learning and speaking other languages, because in those cultures there is a deep imperialist bias engrained – whether they are aware or not – that everyone in the world speaks English, so they can spare the effort to try to pronounce properly another language, or, God forbid, learn it at all. Nothing indicates us that Nile butchers or not other languages, and no one ever takes it into account.

As for Booker, he is French so normally Anglos would have also made fun of his way of talking if it had not been for Matthias.

And now I reach my point. The main reason why Nicolò is consistently depicted as terrible at languages is because of Luca’s Italian accent, and the fact that you can see he is not as fluent in English as Marwan and Matthias are, who are like him not native speakers. This even though the man speaks five languages.

I am not going into the whole mess with interviews with native English speakers who treated him as if he were dumb just because he could not really understand their accent (I myself often have to slow down and ask for a repeat, because some accents are just not as immediately intelligible as Anglos think), given that it has been discussed at length.

The only thing I want to stress is how this headcanon is extremely imperialistic, condescending and plays once again into the harmful stereotype of the dumb, illiterate Southerner.

Linguistic discrimination is a thing, and it’s a thing everywhere. By linguistic discrimination I don’t just mean that against people who cannot speak a major language (or the “official” language of the country they are in), but it also affects accents.Accents have everything to do with geography and class: it is a marker of where you are from, and plays into prejudices linked to the social standing and the class usually associated to that accent. Now, languages are a natural process, in continuous evolution and adaptation, whereas standardised languages (including a standardised pronunciation) are artificial choices. Just think of British vs American English: they are both theoretically the same language, but they diverge in several instances in terms of both vocabulary and pronunciation.Whip this up to the max when it comes to speaking a language that is not your own. The sounds and grammar structures of your mother tongue have an impact on the way you process a different language. That’s why it’s difficult for Spanish-speakers to pronounce S + consonant at the beginning of a word, or why Slavic languages have a harder H sound (again at the beginning of a word). Even when you have the grammar and pronunciation down to a T and are virtually indistinguishable from a native speaker, it does not mean that people who lose their accents and speak like a BBC tv host are any better at languages than people whose accent is still noticeable, or whose speech flow may be slower.

Having an accent does not qualify the level of fluency in a set language. Not speaking like a dictionary does not qualify the level of your intelligence (and I cannot believe I have to even say that).

And yet having an accent is politicised for classist and racist purposes. If someone does not blend in 100% with the majority, it means that something is lacking in them: usually it means they do not have the same level of education, which means they probably come from a lower class, or that they also are foreigners. So they are less than, just because their speech is deemed as not up to par with that of the majority.

@lucyclairedelune meant this when she brought up the example of Gloria from Modern Family, saying “you don’t know how intelligent I am in Spanish”. I want to make an example that is closer to my heart. Elena Ferrante in her wondrous Neapolitan Quartet described the life of a girl who was trying to escape from the material and psychological misery of the slums of Naples in the 60s. To do so she migrates North to study at one of Italy’s most prestigious university: here, however, she is bullied for her accent that clearly marks her origins and (prejudicially, since people of the South were in general poorer) status, class, and, finally, categorises her as less intelligent. Just because of her accent when speaking standard Italian. As a Southern Italian woman, I have often felt like I had to mask my own accent, both in Italy and abroad, to be taken seriously. This regardless of my academic qualifications or how many languages I speak.

When people describe Nicolò as bad at languages simply because Luca has an accent and speaks English slower and less fluently than his co-stars, this is the context that this treatment plays in. Subconsciously (or consciously) it adds to the image that a big chunk of the fandom is painting of him as dumb and ignorant. No one else. And the fact that (luckily) no one ever uses Nile’s monolingualism as a marker for being less intelligent is also because being American is still taken as the standard, as well as the fact that unfortunately Nile (like Yusuf) is going through positive discrimination by which she cannot have any complexity or flaws (starting from hardly ever acknowledging the fact that she herself was part of an invader/occupying foreign force which has bombed and killed civilians in Afghanistan, and was in the midst of a military operation exactly in this sense).

According to that specific discourse, Nicolò is being given every single possible flaw, in order to be opposite to Yusuf. Again, because this fandom, with its Anglocentrism and Puritan incapacity of overcoming black-and-white oppositions, cannot seem to accept that we have a beautiful interracial, interreligious same-sex couple of complex individuals, who can both be smart at the same time. I myself think that Yusuf historically is better at languages than Nicolò, as he was a merchant (and an artist), and I love this difference about them, but conflating intelligence with proficiency in one single language (because it’s only proficiency English that we have been discussing, let’s be honest, if the show had been shot in German we would not be talking about Luca’s issues with the language probably) is an utterly imperialistic, condescending and ridiculous thing to do.

I probably lost the train of my thought (and I had two beers in the meantime, so I am too tired to reread), but what I mainly wanted to highlight is that this mocking attitude towards Nicolò is rooted in both a wider downgrading trend of his character, and on a general approach towards non-English speakers that Anglos have virtually everywhere.

#nicolo di genova #the old guard #the old guard meta #the old guard discorse

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jojo-reader-hell · 3 years

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Time to show you all how we do it in the pinta cuh.

Gwess x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Uh, I guess just Gwess being Gwess. I don’t expect everyone to assume she’s not going to be abusive.

Also if I catch anyone complaining about the Spanglish it’s going down and I know for sure you’ve never kicked it with the 90’s cholas in your entire sheltered life.

...

“Oye, listen bollera.”

“Told you not to fuckin’ call me bollera cabrona.”

“Cállate tu boca. Escucha bollera. Esa machorras, they do shit differently in the pinta. I worry about your ass because you don’t got one mean bone in your body. Shit, you couldn’t even stand up to the guera who bullied you in eighth grade. But I’ll tell you how it is in there esa. Maybe you’ll have the advantage since you’re going in a bollera, not coming out one…”

“What’s bollera?”

She butchers the Spanish, and all you can do is fucking laugh at her poor attempts. Your girlfriend frowns from between your legs, but you tug at her hair to get her to shut up her whining.

Saturdays, she always bugs you in your free time from writing to spend time with her. What the hell is there for two girls to do in prison on a date anyways? You can play cards with her in the yard, have her spot you lifting weights, all that shit gets old. Instead the two of you stay in, she begs you to baby her and brush her hair, and you oblige. Treating it like your grandma did and telling her stories while she made sweet eyes at you.

“How come you always talk in Spanish whenever you tell me stories about us meeting and falling in love?” She asks, pouting her lips up at you.

“Because that’s how it happened esa.” You laugh, tugging on her hair again and making her squeal, “It’s rare that I even get to act like this, not easy being trapped in the middle of two cultures and not getting accepted by either or. But with my babe, I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

She pulls on your jailbird blues, wanting a kiss but you make her wait. It’s just how that shit goes. You still hold grudges from the time she made your first stint into prison some bullshit.

“As I was saying mensa, as every corresponding event would prove in the future, it seemed Little Mosca was, for lack of a better term, entirely full of shit.”

To a point though, as you would later find out. But when it came to it, she didn’t know you or your life.

Never the less you’d have never thought your time in the “pinta” was going to be as smooth sailing as it was. You expected to get into fights, possibly be violated, become “somebody’s bitch” as they so eloquently put it in every fucking prison movie you could get your little pizza hands on. That’s what they told you in your friend groups too. Stop doing loca shit with the girls and go back to school, school girl. You should be at home studying fool. You like to talk about stupid shit like rocks and fucking video games all fucking day. You’re still a kid.

It pisses you off and only serves to give you a Napoleon complex.

Maybe if you had listened, it wouldn’t have gotten you into a case of wrongful arrest that not even the best pro bono lawyer could get you out of. You expected to have no one to turn to in El Acuario. Especially when you didn’t seem to fit in any of the stereotypical niches that came from being an outsider in some bad ass peckerwood lands.

Last name is impossibly hard for the white kids to say? Three strikes you’re out and a beaner. Try to bond with the other people of color? Let’s face it, even if you’re on the same short end of the stick there’s no spot in that long history of oppression for you homes. Speak Spanglish even though you don’t know all that much Spanish because your parents took “English Only” as law? Now every homegirl at El Super is taking the piss out of you.

But say you get grudgingly accepted by the locas, but they’re the kind of girls that sport hoop earrings, lipliner no lipstick, and a neck covered in hickeys? Well, you had the last part, but when the hickeys were from another girl it tends to cause a ruckus in the barrio.

You didn’t expect to be led to your cell and recognize nearly every girl already locked up in there.

“A la verga! Es La Bollera guey!”

“Sad Girl?!” you exclaimed at the voice, only to be jostled into silence.

“Shut the fuck up!” Screams the guard who is leading you.

“Orale bollera! The fuck are you doing in here homegirl?!”

“Let her go homes, she ain’t do shit!”

“Ay loca! The fuck did you do to get in here foo? Get caught eating panocha again?!”

“She ain’t do shit pinche culero! Let her go!”

But somehow against every barrier, life worked in its own way. You went to school, tried to keep it straight to fit in, let your energy help you to fit in seamlessly no matter where you went. But the homegirls always warned you to stay out of shit. Even though they all loved you anyway, bollera y todo, they always claimed you barely survived outside when it came to your sweet nature, how the hell were you going to last a day in the pinta?

The way they seem to want your freedom, it seems like you’re going to incite a riot among the chicanas.

You’re almost embarrassed. Every mom friend on the block seems to be doing time the same way as you, but the camaraderie doesn’t last too long.

So far the worst part of Green Dolphin was being arrested. Slammed on the hot hood of a police cruiser and cuffed, thrown around like you were a rag doll. Granted it wasn’t any fun having la juda sticking their fingers into where you didn’t want anyone except your future partner to, but that and the mugshot, it came with the territory. Eventually your homegirls do have to quiet down, not before reassuring you that they got your “esquina”. Well, now that you’re trapped in a six by eight cell with some goo goo eyed chick that acts like she’s la reina of the whole fucking place, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be an option anymore.

Even better… she’s not even Hispanic or Latina. Her skin is pasty white and clashes with her blue koolaid dyed lips.

No matter. You know how to deal with the white girls too. That’s the beauty of being able to chameleon your way into any situation.

“Uh… hey.” You say awkwardly. “Nice to meet you.”

She doesn’t say a word. Weird. You have to scoot by her to take your place on the bottom bunk, about four seconds from opening your mouth to ask the dreaded ice breaker “what are you in for”, when she suddenly yanks you by the coveralls.

Oh… Oh hell no.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?! Thats my bunk-…”

Earrings off. Let’s go fool. It goes down like Diddy Kong, or more like Donkey when that’s just the type of punch she gets seemingly out of nowhere. You don’t have to turn around to know. She was fucked the minute she tried to get you.

It’s a matter of seconds, after you’ve floored her to the enamel first and pretty much sat on her chest, your hands and an unseen force have her pinned below you with your hands around her skinny guerra neck. The homegirls must have thought the screams were coming from you, because immediately you hear the banging of iron bars as your homegirls are coming to back you up.

“Oh shit! Bollera! Que esta pasando guey?!”

“Get the fuck off her white bitch!”

Their spring into action is stopped dead in its tracks when they see you’re strangling the girl on the floor. It takes them a minute to really comprehend the predicament you’ve got the girl in. When they only knew you from hang outs at Burger King or some dude’s house, they don’t truly know the reason that you waltzed in among them. Unafraid. Unyielding. They only know you that you’re a real loca to be walking around with girls who claim to be so.

They’re dead silent. Don’t even say shit when the girl’s turning blue. Not a word of encouragement or a “ja guey” to keep you going. But it’s fine.

You knock her back and forth into the enamel. She keeps trying to kick you off but her arms are pinned. You’re too far up on her chest, almost sitting on her breasts, smothering her down and punctuating every sentence with a jolt of her head against the flooring as you press down on her windpipe.

“Andale puta, you wanna play that way, I’ll play too.”

She’s blue. Turning the same shade as her lipstick. But you let her stay conscious enough to squeak out an answer.

“Here’s a few rules home girl, keep your fucking hands off me and leave me the fuck alone. I don’t give a shit about you, I didn’t get thrown in the pinta to get fucked up by some gabacha. But you wanna play that shit with me? Al rato bitch!”

“Sueltalo Bollera!”

“You feel me bitch?” You growl.

“Sueltalo homegirl! She ain’t worth it!”

“Let her go!”

“You feel me?!” You insist.

A squeak. That’s all you get from her. A small squeak of affirmation and you let her neck go, continuing to to make your bed as she flounders on the floor, totally ignorant of your homegirl’s gawking but feeling proud of yourself none the less.

It’s no fanfare when you meet up with everyone else later on. They tell you to watch your shit and to leave your cellmate at that. If word gets out, you might have a couple more fights at this rate.

But it doesn’t matter. Smooth sailing from now on since you stood up to her before she could get a hit in.

“You hit me though!”

“Technically that was my Stand that hit you.”

Those same blue koolaid lips pout at you again, and this time you lean down to give her a kiss right on her mouth. She squeals, its that same familiar sound she made when you had her pinned to the floor all those months ago.

“Yeah and you tried to knock my ass out too, but the thing I wasn’t prepared for was to meet someone who liked it like that.” You laugh.

Gwess just huffs, making grabby hands at your coveralls and begging you for more affection.

That’s how it goes in the pinta though. At least Little Mosca was right about that part.

#jojo’s bizzare adventure #jojo’s bizarre adventure stone ocean #DO YOU ALL EVEN FUCKING KNOW ABOUT THE SHIT I WENT THRU TO FIND THIS DOCUMENT #TWO FUCKING HOURS #FUCK #gwess x reader #guess x reader #jjba stone ocean #wlw #implied abuse #abuse #tw violence #hispanic!reader

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lady-plantagenet · 3 years

Text

What hasn’t already been said: The Spanish Princess 2

Episode 3: GOOD Grief! (we finally have a good episode on our hands)

To all those of you keen enough to have come back for another segment of ‘what hasn’t already been said: TSP’, as opposed to have just been scrolling when you see this - welcome back! (Scrollers you too <3)

Drawing of Thomas More’s Son AKA who Margaret Pole at this point wants to be the step baby momma of ;).

To anyone who’s seeing this for the first time: what this is a list of observations, jokes, reactions and criticism which occur to me upon a rewatch. I wait every week until Saturday to do this so that I have had my fill of scrolling through the tag and aggregating what has already been said. I tried doing a whole spoof (here where I gave up 10% in) but tbh a) I don’t know the history well enough b) it’s more time consuming than I thought and c) this series is just not as funny or as crazy as TWQ, so it’s untenable. Having said that: This is not a hatepost. I’m not hatewatching this series and nitpicking on purpose but expressing my honest views and trying to find the good in it as well as the bad.

Without further ado...

First Scenes:

LMAO the way Wolsey suggests they break their alliance with Spain is freaking hilarious because the actor delivers the lines as if he were a high school girl making a personal attack by suggesting the prom change its theme to 70s disco to the chagrin of the peppy up-and-coming rival.

Also @ Henry VIII looking like the peppy up-and-comer’s bff and shy stan with that pencil bite and small smirk when Catherine loses her cool against Wolsey.

I’m sorry... who is Henry married to again?

Also what is Margaret Pole doing at the council meeting?? I’m not saying I don’t like it.

Margaret Pole warning against certain repetitive thinking creating madness :(((

Attempted Naked Twister:

Oh Catherine, what is with you and all the other STARZ protagonists and that weird politcky bedroom talk? Who actually finds this sexy?

‘Catherine you are unnatural’ ooof that line delivery was somehow haunting.

Was the whole ‘I can’t be rushed you are off-putting with your overpowering’ a callback to Arthur and Catherine? Apparently there’s another writer for this episode so I won’t put all subtly past them.

Scotland:

‘Shitey men’ asdkjashd

Look I’m tired of all this ‘my children won’t be safe’ line getting repeated. Look mate, murder of royal infants and children was not exactly a common occurence, even in cases of deposition. The Princes in the Tower are an exception to this but a very infamous case for that reason. Child murder was extremely taboo. In situations like this with an infant kid, no one is going to bother murdering the babies and taking their thrones, the lords will just vie for power and make themselves de facto rulers and oust the queen. It’s not a question of safety but a question of holding power. Stop giving all women characters perma mummy brains.

Maggie being all caring:

‘Barnaby’ *scoffs* ‘Such an English name’ - OH MAN 0_0 is Catherine mocking them for trying to adapt ? Like I know it’s meant to show her envy for Lina, but it’s coming out all messed up.

Our girl Maggie’s smile screams I’m beating your ass in chess.

Anyhow this is the least histrionic we’ve seen Catherine so far.

Chaplain vs Catherine:

I’m interested how Catherine will feel at Stafford’s execution given that I have noticed this show build up to a friendship between them.

Why is everyone laughing at the whole ‘will you delight us with new schemes’ line was not that funny?

LMAO at Thomas Boleyn’s attempted brown-nosing.

You know what? Ruairi is a decent actor. When he says ‘so you admit it? you lost the child because you tried to be a man?” the actor conveys Henry’s troubled mind, lowkey scare towards Catherine and bewilderment all in one. The way his eyes do not move but just widen emotionlessly also gives this sense that he is being manipulated (which I guess they are going for with Wolsey). Then the whole choir music in the background.. I don’t know.. I’m liking this, it’s creating a vibe of a king of haunted and increasingly paranoid Henry. I’m sure they are going for that, so good.

Ursula Pole and Mama:

Maggie Pole say ‘riches don’t keep you safe’ with tears in her eyes :’(. Please tell me how this is not her thinking on her parents and granddad Warwick and what befell them ;’(.

I find Ursula refreshing actually, don’t get those types of heroines often. But they are making her similar to a gold-digger, an exhalted marriage was first and foremost considered a thing of honour. Noblepeople wouldn’t speak in such mercenary terms regarding their marriages.

Post Mary Defiance:

I love the ‘horse’ nickname from Brandon n’awwww

Also just realised what made TWQ so atmospheric - that wierd ‘oooo’ sound effect in the background when a character was being paranoid or worrying. They are using it during Henry’s ‘How is it that I have no sons?’ and it is just... so effective.

Catherine calling them ordinary children... she just keeps striking me as more and more classist. Like ok, I know every royal was... but still, I thought she was meant to see Lina as a friend and equal despite her race and status. To add the race element, this kind of rubs me the wrong way.

Also it is so clear by the end when Catherine states how the king is upset with her, she expects Maggie to ask her about it.. but she doesn’t lmao.

Back to Scotland until Sexy boy fencing:

I love me this soft boi. Angus <3 <3

I like how they address that some men don’t really like killing and that violence isn’t inherent in a man’s nature.

Oh man, are we supposed to look at Lina’s house and deplore the impoverished conditions? It would go for at least 3,000,000 pounds in today’s property market?

Is Catherine being particularly classist again with ‘Why u not becoming a butcher Wolsey, ey?’.

Though I will admit the ‘but giving meat to the poor is also good’ was one of her only smart comebacks.

Just realised, Catherine’s pink dress pretty as it is, looks straight out of the 1570s... why?

Montage and After:

You guys are right, there is this weird longing between Henry and Wolsey lmao. It is actually insane.

So basically Catherine is officially depressed

OOOFF we have Stafford as regent instead of Catherine. (edit: I suppose it’s cause they go to France which they didn’t historically? Also if Stafford is at home then what is his son later doing in France, why would he be there without his father. This show didn’t think this through)

Meg Singing:

An impassionate speech is not too anachronistic. But despite the title of this post (what hasn’t been said) I will reiterate that 16th century and Medieval people’s problem wasn’t that they were ashamed of their grief and didn’t cry. In fact, crying was somewhat more socially acceptable then than it even is now! Even manly men like Arthur were written as crying in literature such as Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. Obviously you couldn’t go overboard, but in truth crying was indeed often too performative rather than hidden too much behind doors.

Pole and More UWUWU in France and after:

I LIKE THIS INTELLECTUAL FLIRTING

It’s nice to see a depiction of romantic feelings between mature and level-headed subjects.

God Mary Tudor is so beautiful in this scene jesus. and the music when she was being presented was also very beautiful.

Maggie Pole getting given ‘a modest income’ yeah... she was one of the wealthiest peers of her day.

Also Maggie’s lady cousin not lady aunt Frost!

‘shaking of the sheets’ lmaoooo

William Compton cracks the hell out of me. I love this guy. He is just so creepy and twisted yet super keen and friendly. ahaha He looks like a riot, I hope we see him more. lmao tiles.

Also this palace feels very anachronistic almost 18th century-ish.

I like the Louis and Mary sequence, it’s nice seeing him trying to make her feel less scared, but OMFG when he lay on that chair.. for one second I thought they were trying to kill him off already.

Scotland: ‘Love is an open doooooorrrrr’ + Last Scene:

I ship Meg and Douglas ahhhh this soft boi x strong woman match is everything Henry and Catherine could have been.

I wonder... why is Lina speaking in Spanish more than Catherine. hmmm Are they trying to foreshadow Lina’s eventual return home and how Catherine become a true englishwoman?

Conclusion:

7.5/10

I cannot in all fairness believe it. This was actually decent. I’ve given up on historical accuracy long ago so by this point I’m focusing more on how it stands as as drama. I mean, TWQ was also a flop when it came to grasping the complex issues of that era but why do I feel compelled to rewatch it every year? Because it had atmosphere when it came to acting, music, certain aesthetics (though the costumes let me down often). It felt adequately gothic and dark, yet bright and jewel-lish when it had to be, sometimes both at the same time. Some one-liners were also memorable etc...

So far TSP 2 did not have any of this. Everything felt way too off and anachronistic. But not even consistently anachronistic. The music was also often very meh (though I just noted the absence of the spanish stringy theme that kept playing in season 1 - I guess I understand why), the dialogue very clichéd (‘alright lads let’s throw in the words: king, crown, power, fight, battle + other buzzwords and we have ourselves Shakespeare’) and so on... but I saw a change in this episode and I couldn’t initially point out what it was.

Upon rewatch, I identified some of the improvements (noted above) but above all: The producer was different! Boy does it show. Unfortunately, I think she is only for this one episode which really sucks. Come back! There is more chemistry between the couples, less predictable interactions, pervy Compton, cinnamonroll Douglas, better music, more scenic shots (e.g Douglas and Margaret in church) e.t.c. I hope it will match the rest of the STARZ productions in getting better towards the end.

Look it’s no masterpiece. But I’ll give credit where it’s due because at least this time it didn’t leave me feeling wanting and unsatisfied (if that makes sense).

#the spanish princess #the spanish princess 2 #lady plantagenet's series reviews #catherine of aragon #henry viii #mary tudor queen of france #margaret tudor #charles brandon #margaret pole

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lol-jackles · 5 years

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You’ve mentioned that you are (or used to be?) an X-Men fan...who is/are your favorite character(s) in X-Men and what kind of X-Men story do you want to see in MCU?

My favorite X-Men characters looks nothing like the movies: Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Gambit, and Rogue. Before it was destoryed not once but twice (!), Dark Phoenix saga was one of my favorite story. Keyword “saga”. But the The Last Stand and Dark Phoenix was mostly about Charles Xavier’s endless existential crises and his tendency to inflict them on everyone around him instead about, you know, Jean Grey and the Dark Phoenix.

In the comics, Fox animation, and X-Men Evolution, my favorite character is Scott Summers aka Cyclops. Which is why I’ve come to dread the movies because they butcher him. Every. Single. Time. Cyclops is probably the most complicated character among the mutants. Most major X-Men arcs are centered around him in someway. Scott’s personal life, romances, family issues, rivalries and ideologies are what shape the story line of X-Men, it’s bascially a soap-opera with Cyclops as the lead. And that’s for a reason, he’s the quintessential X-Man who wants to make the world equal for mutant-kind in the right way. He’s one of the greatest tactical minds in the Marvel world, ballsy enough to challenge the Avengers and that’s what I want to see in the MCU movie because X Men hate hate HATE the Avengers and see them as hypocrits who don’t care about mutants and view them as second class citizens but want them to fight the Avenger’s cause. I want to see real civil war: X Men vs Avengers.

Anyhoo, Scott is the true hero of the epic tale of the X-men. He is crimminally badly written in the movies. Every. Single. Time. Thank you Mr. Bryan Pervy Singer for ruining Scott’s character. Robert Singer. Bryan Singer. I really hate that surname.

Wolverine in the comic is feral who goes looking for trouble, like the Stoffel the honeybadger that keeps trying to break into the lion enclosure to fight lions despite nearly being killed by the same lions in the first fight. He’s not supposed to be a soft reluctant hero that exist in fanfictions and now in movies. Wolverine is a heavy drinker and smoker; his healing powers negate the long term effects of alcohol and tobacco and allow him to indulge in prolonged binges. That same healing powers allow him to live a long time so in contrast to his brutish nature, Wolverine is extremely knowledgeable due to his traveled around the world and amassed extensive knowledge of foreign languages and cultures. He is fluent in English, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Cheyenne, Spanish, Arabic and Lakota. Wolverine is frequently depicted as a gruff loner, often taking leave from the X-Men to deal with personal issues or problems. Stil, he is a reliable ally and capable leader, his sheer will and grit have led the X-Men to victory on more than many occasions.

The coolest of all X Men is undoubtedly Gambit. He has the capability to forgive others as he realizes he is not a saint himself. That makes him an emphatic character. At the same time he cannot forgive himself and that makes him a tragic hero.

Emma Frost’s power is awesome, she can turn into a solid diamond making her nearly indestructible but also making her emotionless at the same time. Emma is smart, devious, cunning, manipulative, sexy, beautiful, has a dry sense of humor, powerful, skilled, a total bitch, not a goody two-shoes. Yet unlike some others, she has shown an enormous capacity to love and is a excellent teacher, even though her ways can be a little brutal.

Compete with my love for Frost is Rogue. Love her inner turmoil and her sassy Southern personality. Beyond that though there’s the matter that no other character’s backstory and mutation so elegantly encapsulates the subtle tragedy of a mutant’s life. She is a danger to all around, and thus cannot ever feel the joy and comfort of touching those she loves. Her power is basically her own, personal prison.

#X Men

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jennamacaroni · 5 years

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Rules: answer 21 questions and then tag other people

Nickname: i don’t really have many. a few include: jc and j

Sign: libra scales bish

Height: 5′6″

Last movie I saw: in general: crazy rich asians; in the theater: on the basis of sex

Last Thing I Googled: stenography (and watched this youtube). i got to this because of this line i loved in the book i’m currently reading: “Ray Brinkman, junior intellectual property lawyer. Dorothy Cazaly, stenographer for a company that does work for his firm. He can’t stop watching her as she takes dispositions. The silent, fluid beauty of her manual ballet boggles him. Appassionata Sonata, slewing out of her miming fingers.” beautiful.

Favorite Musician(s): ever: bon iver / taylor swift; today: maggie rogers / colter wall

Song: favorite all time: roslyn - bon iver & st vincent; this week: issues - julia michales, plain to see plainsman - colter wall

Other blogs: i technically have a side blog called ‘jennaspaghetti’ that were mostly only gifs from an app called phhhoto that the boomerang feature of instagram made obsolete

Do I get asks: not really unless i’m actively writing fic which lol its been forever

Blogs following: 559 what the fuck

Amount of sleep: i go for a full 8

What I’m wearing: black jeans, grey ‘new england vs everyone’ tshirt, patriots windbreaker

Dream job: i don’t want to have to work. free to do whatever i want, including lots of long walks with my dog through trees and along beaches, hours to read books while making bread, cooking for friends and family. i’d also at some point like to work with my hands. farming or ranching. i’d like to learn to butcher.

Favourite food: some include: good bowls of ramen, crispy carnitas, whole grilled fish, sea urchin straight from the shell, lobster rolls, in n out cheeseburgers, a good northeast italian grinder (sub)

Languages: english, i have taken many years of spanish in school but never spoke it consistently enough to be any good. but i have knowledge there

Random fact: i inexplicably painted this very good portrait of my dog. it sort of just came out of me as i’ve never really painted much before

Describe yourself as aesthetic things: old spice, the beach, library books, baking bread, gray and navy tones, sports balls, candles that smell like boys cologne and sandalwood, family style meals you eat mostly with your hands

tagging: @tarynlatx @kennamanenna @sarah-crewe @ididntmeanyou @lebanesetoaster @confusedanon @rivertalesien @gleerant @proudlyunicorn do the thing or, you know, don’t

#about me #this was fun

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tacitcantos · 5 years

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That Time The Dresden Files Was Still Accidentally Racist

youtube

Link to Part 1

In my last video I looked out how Jim Butcher’s Changes contains some troubling stereotypes about the maya, painting them as violent and their gods as demon vampires of the red court. I highly suggest going back and checking that out before continuing this video. In this one I’m going to look at why it’s troubling to cast Christianity as a positive and heroic force pitted against mayan vampires.

The Christian god exists in the Dresden Files universe, but has a very hands off presence. He does exert his power through subtle means though, and every Christian character, institution, or item in the series is unambiguously good and lacking in any kind of flaw. In Changes they’re also all positioned directly and explicitly against the red court.

The most blatant example of this comes in the final battle of the book at Chichen Itza. In the Dresden Files universe there are three holy swords that are physically incapable of being used for evil without shattering. One of Harry’s allies wields one in the battle, and at one point becomes possessed by a Christian angel or holy spirit, and shouts up at the red court vampires of outer night:

"False gods! Pretenders! Usurpers of the truth! Destroyers of faith, of families, of lives, of children! For your crime against the Mayans, against the people of the world, now will you answer! Your time has come! Face judgement Almighty!"

--Ch. 46, Changes

It’s important to place Changes’ representation of christianity in the broader context of media. In the last video I talked about how while human sacrifice was a legitimate portion of mesoamerican culture and religion, it’s overrepresented in media to the point where human sacrifice becomes the entirety of pre-columbian mesoamerica's identity and cultural legacy.

To illustrate why this is problematic, imagine for a moment if every representation of christianity focused on it’s obsession with sacrifice and suffering. And christianity does have just as much an obsession with both as the maya or aztec religions: Growing closer to God through suffering is a key aspect of christianity: it’s why martyr’s are so celebrated and turned into saints, why until the modern day mortification of the flesh through wearing a hair coat or fasting or engaging in self flagellation wasn’t unheard of among the clergy, and why even in the modern day mother Teresa believed in the beauty of suffering and may have withheld painkillers from patients in her care because of it.

And while drawing a thorned rope through the foreskin of your penis like mayan kings did for the prosperity of their kingdom rightfully sounds horrific, the ritual mutilation of genitals is one of the core tenets of another Abrahamic faith: circumcision in the jewish religion is not just a custom, but an actual covenant and contract with god.

But Christianity’s obsession with suffering isn’t something that’s reflected or engaged with in popular media. We may see Jesus on the cross in artistic depictions, but obsession with suffering doesn’t permeate and define Christianity in fiction the way human sacrifice permeates and defines mesoamerican culture and religion in fiction. For example, The Dresden Files puts a magical spin on only the positive aspects of Christianity, not the ones obsessed with suffering. As we discussed, christian characters and holy objects are unambiguously good in The Dresden Files.

These are the representations Jim Butcher chose, the side of christianity he decided to legitimize by giving magical weight in the books. In his fictional world we see vampire maya performing human sacrifices to quench their blood thirst, but we don’t see monks with backs bloody from the scourge performing dark rituals for Jesus, don’t see angels who want to cause mass suffering to kindle the light of god in people’s hearts, don’t see vampire conquistadors crossing to the new world so they can slake their thirst in the blood of millions.

That last image of conquistadors crossing to the new world and committing atrocities just so that a few souls could be saved through conversion? It’s not actually as fictitious as you might assume.

To fully understand why it’s problematic to cast christians as good guys against evil mayan gods, we have to look again at context and history. While nowadays we tend to think of the religious aspect of the conquistadors as a flimsy pretext in their true hunt for gold, the conquistadors were actually devoutly religious, and very much saw themselves as instruments of God. Here’s a passage from a book called 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus that explains it well:

Famously, the conquistador Bernal Díaz de Castillo ticked off the reasons he and others joined Cortés: “to serve God and His Majesty [the king of Spain], to give light to those who were in darkness, and to grow rich, as all men desire to do.” In Díaz’s list, spiritual and material motivations were equally important. Cortés was constantly preoccupied by the search for gold, but he also had to be restrained by the priests accompanying him from promulgating the Gospel in circumstances sure to anger native leaders. After the destruction of Tenochtitlan, the Spanish court and intellectual elite were convulsed with argument for a century about whether the conversions were worth the suffering inflicted. Many believed that even if Indians died soon after conversion, good could still occur.

--Pg 143

The conquistadors very much considered there to be a moral dimension in their actions, that they could save the souls of the maya from false idols. And in the world of the Dresden Files, they were right: the christian god was good, the maya were ruled by demons, and no matter how many had to die along the way, the conquistadors saved them.

The book never explicitly states this, but it’s the only logical conclusion to draw from the world Jim Butcher’s created. It’s not a leap: it’s all there on the page, validating the atrocities the Spanish committed. It’s the equivalent of writing that there was a cabal of evil jewish wizards that really were manipulating post war Germany, or that africans really were half ape creatures that worshiped dark spirits.

And look, there’s always going to be issues imposing supernatural elements on the real world, on putting a magical spin to real events. Doesn’t it always invalidate real world triumphs and tragedies to say it was really magic at work or some secret society? I don’t think so, but I do think it matters how you do it. To illustrate what I mean, let’s look at another fantasy book that has vampires superimposed onto the real world: Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, 70% of whose premise is right there in the title.

In the book, ante-bellum plantation owners were in reality vampires who enslaved black africans to use as cattle. So why isn’t that problematic, if making mayan gods vampire is? The answer is history, and what side of the it the story is taking. While it can be argued that it’s problematic for a white writer to be appropriating black suffering for his fantasy novel and that turning the cruelty of real humans into monsters lets them off the moral hook, the underlying thematic message is sound: African chattel slavery was bad, and the people who did it were bad.

And that thematic message about slave owners being bad is a message we still need to hear because it’s not an open and shut case in America today that the south were bad guys or even that slavery was bad.

And it matters that Jim Butcher is essentially putting a magical spin on racist conquistador propaganda, because the Dresden files is a hugely popular book series: as any of the covers are happy to tell you, Jim Butcher is a 1# New York Times best selling author. Changes isn’t an english class short story that will be read by fifteen people, it’s a book in a massively popular series that was read by millions. When a book reaches that popularity level, everything in it has an impact.

And what is the impact of Changes? Obviously it’s impossible to track, but as I mentioned in the last video the maya are by no means a dead people or culture, with around six million living in central America today. What’s the impact on public perception of them from a book like this? Just as it isn’t an open and shut case for some people whether black slavery was bad, it isn’t an open and shut case whether hispanics broadly, and central Americans specifically, are culturally valuable. Not when refugees fleeing violence riddled countries are caged, not when the president repeatedly uses racist dog whistles to refer to them.

Like I said in the last video, I don’t think Jim Butcher did any of this on purpose. I think the air we breath is filled with culturally and racially problematic ideas and he didn’t question them: of course the maya gods were violent, of course the christian god is good, and isn’t the idea of vampire maya just too badass to pass up?

Ironically if he’d stopped to think about his bias’ Butcher could’ve easily written Changes in a way that would’ve sidestepped most of the issue without even having to fundamentally alter the plot. One way to do it would’ve been to shift the red court’s origin to conquistadors who came to the new world for slaughter.

It could even be a plot element that Quetzalcoatl or a proxy of his shows up in the final battle to help Dresden. I mean, it’s not that much of a reach: in the original book Odin shows up to fight in the battle at Chichen Itza.

None of this is to say you can’t like the Dresden Files, or even Changes specifically. Hell, I got caught up in Changes as I was rereading it for this video and forgot just how exciting and well paced the books are. But if fantasy means anything, then we shouldn’t pretend it doesn’t when we run into something we don’t like, shouldn’t simultaneously say it can inspire us and that it’s just mindless fun, shouldn’t shy away from the problematic aspects of it. If anything we should engage with it more, expect more from those authors and stories we love and value.

#the dresden files #dresden files #jim butcher #racism #video essay #book #fantasy series #meso american #mayan #aztec #christianity #vampires

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