#does anyone have name suggestions for his birth name or a name Pascal comes up with for him? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

skulledstars · 4 years

Text

oh heavens, is that ALONZO FIGUEROA from SYCAMORE WAY i see roaming around mapleview? minnie may’s always calling them -RESTLESS & -TACITURN. i happen to think they’re not that bad! they’re a pretty cool ARCHITECT and every time i’ve seen them, they’ve always been +ALLOCENTRIC & +GREGARIOUS. i hope i see them around again!

PINTEREST • PLAYLIST • STATISTICS

hello, y’all ! i’m frankie, am 24 years old and my pronouns are she/her, coming to you live from the cst —— & it’s been nearly seven months since i last rped tbh, so please bear with me. i honestly don’t know what else to say but if you could give this post a like & i’ll come with desserts into your dm’s so that we can plot or something ? if anyone prefers D!$C0RD, feel free to add me: FRANKIE ♡#7928 —— but it’s up to y’all of course... ANYWAYS, MEET ALONZO.

trigger warnings: brief mention of a parental death due to cancer.

» 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒 ;

full name, alonzo ismael figueroa castillo.

meaning of name, ❛ noble, ready for battle. ❜

pronunciation, uh - lon - zoh.

aliases, lonz, lonny, lonzo, zo.

age, forty-four [ 44 ].

date of birth, december 10th, 1975.

place of birth, santiago, chile.

hometown, mapleview, north carolina.

zodiac sign, sagittarius.

race, hispanic ╱ latinx.

nationality, chilean & american.

gender & pronouns, cis man + he ╱ him.

profession, architect.

current location, mapleview, north carolina.

face claim, josé pedro balmaceda pascal.

» 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏𝐒 ;

parents, enrique ismael figueroa & esmeralda lucía castillo.

siblings, n ╱ a — only child.

martial status, divorced, single.

children, elena [ 11 ] & mateo [ 4 ].

pets, one dog & two cats, ( names, breeds, et cetera, tbd. )

» 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 ;

alonzo was born in a south american country: chile. his parents & a 9-month old baby boy moved to the united states — and had grown fond of the small town by the name of 𝒎𝒂𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘 & stayed ever since. mom and dad never had another child; it was the three of them against the world, or that’s what it felt like for the first couple of years. they did everything they could to raise him in a land with better opportunities.

growing up, he was a decent student with passing grades: mostly b’s, c’s and the occasional a’s ( which called for small victories with chilean desserts and a milkshake ). alonzo improved the more he attended tutoring sessions. they expected more from him... obviously. as one parent does. his strongest subject was mathematics. long story short, he tried his best with everything he did.

during his senior year, his parents noticed that since math was his strong suit so they suggested he should get into an architecture degree—this was one of the few times where he actually agreed with his parents. he applied to several universities and one of them was: usc school of architecture. let’s just say he couldn’t let this opportunity pass. so long, mapleview; hello california ! off he went.

several years had passed, alonzo graduated from USC with a bachelor’s degree in architectural design. after that, he spent some of his years away from his hometown, living in california, earning himself an internship with a top tier design studio. he never saw it coming. he’d worked too hard to be where he was and he wanted more; accomplish more than he sought out for.

of course, he’d visit his parents for some time in the holidays or surprising them with a visit— helping them with anything and everything they needed. he felt like he owed it to them.

alonzo met his future ex-wife while she was an intern. they got on very well— started off as friends until they eventually fell in love with each other. it was bliss and married only a year and a half after dating. they decided to move to mapleview after he found out his mom fell ill.

alonzo was a small town boy, then a big city guy... and back to a small town dude a little over a decade ago. however, the circumstances were that of his mother and his responsibility was to care for her, look after her. alonzo was eternally grateful that she supported him. no matter the amount of struggles they had, looking after his mom, it was always rough for him... all of them.

alonzo and pia eventually had a daughter, elena. not only was he a busy man but as soon as he became a father, he made every fiber of his being to be as hands-on & 100% present as possible. sure, there were obstacles along the way, but alonzo sure made the effort. thankfully, his parents and his mother was still alive to welcome their first grandchild into the world— still pushing through. unfortunately, some years later, she had lost her battle with cancer.

alonzo and pia’s marriage started to deteriorate and decided to divorce. they had found out she had fallen pregnant with their second child, a son by name of mateo. before he was born, they decided to stay together. shortly after his birth, they couldn’t stay together just for the kids. they amicably decided to split and co-parent their kids. he and his ex-wife remain friends to this day, four years after their divorce.

you may have spotted the name 𝐀𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐙𝐎 𝐅𝐈𝐆𝐔𝐄𝐑𝐎𝐀 in several architectural digest magazines ( including others ), as he is known to be a successful and renowned architect across the globe. has he received awards? damn well he has. over the years, he expanded his design firms with locations across the nation. despite living in a small town, he still works and occasionally travels for work. however, he also works from home and has a work-life balance. it wasn’t easy at first but he’s there and pleased.

» 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 ;

design firm partner [ 0 / 2 ] —— description to be added. might be a wc sent to the main. idk.

best friends [ 0 / 4 ] —— pretty self-explanatory. they can be their own grown up squad. age shouldn’t define them; they are often times up to no-good.

short-lived fling [ 0 / 1 ] —— description tba. can be plotted out.

will they, won't they [ 0 / 1 ] —— description tba. can be plotted out.

ride or die ??

polar opposite friends ??

cousin(s) ??? y’all, idk.

ANYTHING & EVERYTHING. COME TALK TO ME. i don’t bite :) pinky promise.

#mapleviewintro #death tw #cancer tw #parental death tw #¿¿ somehow this turned out to be longer than i intended ... ??#......... ALSO i may have sprained my finger because it’s swollen #.... hence the intro being delayed ....#*frankie’s slowly typing*

15 notes · View notes

ayearofpike · 6 years

Text

The Immortal

Pocket Books, 1993 213 pages, 16 chapters + epilogue ISBN 0-671-74510-7 LOC: CPB Box no. 705 vol. 16 OCLC: 27434465 Released July 1, 1993 (per B&N)

Did you ever take a vacation because your best friend insisted that you had to? Josie Goodwin is. At the suggestion (or maybe insistence) of her oldest compatriot Helen Demeter, her family is spending two weeks on Mykonos in the Greek isles. Helen’s there too, and she has a lot to show Josie from her trip the previous summer, not the least of which is a sacred island with a plateau that has a mythical connection to Apollo. What Josie doesn’t know is her own connection to Apollo. But Helen does, and it’s a connection that calls for no less than cold vengeance.

I have distinct memories of reading this book on a summer vacation road trip with my dad. But aside from the fate of the main character, I found that I didn’t actually remember that much about this story. Revisited in 2018, this is some Percy Jackson shit. Like, not to the point where Rick Riordan owes Pike some money, but it definitely doubles down on the sex among gods, mortals, and monsters. It’s fitting that I read this one while reading The Sea of Monsters to my kids, because I was already in the Greek gods mode for it. Although enough people have written about Greek myth in modern times that I can’t say anyone is directly ripping anyone else, necessarily. Maybe they just have the same muse.

So, all right, where do I jump in? The beginning is as good a place as any, I suppose. We’re on a plane with Josie and Helen (who, by the way, maybe couldn’t have a more Americanized Greek name) as it descends into Athens. They’re traveling with Josie’s dad, a once-hot screenwriter who is currently struggling, and his current flame, a failed alcoholic actress. Josie wakes up knowing they’re close, with a sense of almost being home. Which is weird, right, because she’s never been to Greece before. Foreshadowey! WOOOOOO

They have to cab to a smaller airport and hop another plane to the island of Mykonos, which is their final destination. Helen can’t warn the Goodwins about the rudeness of Greek people enough, but Josie finds them very pleasant. She wonders if maybe it’s this difference in attitude that makes boys who are initially attracted to Helen eventually want to be with her. Yep, Pike did it again with the accidentally-steal-yo-man girl, only at least Josie is honest with herself and admits that going out with her best friend’s ex makes her an asshole. Not that she’s going to stop. There’s one boy in particular she’s thinking of here, who went with Helen and then with her and then moved away and dropped off the face of the planet. Remember when you could do that, all the way back in the 1990s?

So they get to the hotel, drop their crap, and decide to go snorkeling at Paradise beach. They have to rent motor scooters to get there, but it turns out Helen has an ulterior motive for wanting to go so far away: a guy. Specifically, a British bartender named Tom, whom she met during her trip the previous summer. Of course Josie is instantly smitten, but she’s not immediately planning to steal Tom. They plan to go out later, the three of them and one of Tom’s friends, and then the girls get their snorkeling equipment and get in the water.

It’s when Josie pushes herself too hard that we learn a little more backstory. Seems she had a mysterious heart inflammation the previous summer while Helen was in Greece and almost died from it. The experience has made her appreciate life more, and so she really wants to tackle everything that comes her way. But her endurance is still not where it should be, and she’s been swimming for an hour. As she struggles to get back to shore, Tom plunges into the water (in his full bar uniform, no less) and pulls her in. Interesting that he was watching her swim while he was supposed to be at work, yes?

So they go back to the hotel and Josie grabs a nap, and then she decides to interact with her parentals. She argues with the girlfriend, who is drunk in the bar watching TV, and then finds her dad pecking on his laptop on his room’s balcony. Seems he’s been fighting with a science-fiction screenplay for about a year. Mr. Goodwin has never before had this hard a time unfolding a story; before, they always just came to him, but now he can’t figure out where to take it. He knows that there are humans in an interstellar war with aliens, and that the humans have captured one and are going to make her escort a single pilot on a suicide mission to blow up the alien homeworld, but he doesn’t really know why or what comes next. (I think the screenplay is supposed to have some parallel with the narrative, but it’s a pretty big stretch.) He’s interested in Josie’s ideas, and she tells him she’ll need to think on it.

Right now it’s time for her to meet Helen and the boys for dinner. She finds Helen at a restaurant in town, and they talk about their mutual attraction to Tom, and Helen says she won’t be upset if Tom prefers Josie only she is obviously lying. Tom shows up a little later with his roommate Pascal, a big French dude who works with handicapped kids most of the year but is spending his summer delivering vegetables to restaurants. In fact, he’s got a truck coming in on the late ferry, and he wants to take it for a ride with one of the girls — only (obviously) neither one wants to leave Tom to the other. So he takes off in the truck, and the other three go to a bar, where Helen drinks too much and pukes on Tom’s shoes, so that’s over. Josie takes her home, they fall asleep, and Josie dreams of being a goddess suffused in radiant blue light. When she wakes up she’s totally fine and feeling great, even though she drank at least two bottles of wine and should be a little hungover. Did the light save her from the booze?

Of course, being totally sick doesn’t keep Helen from having an agenda. She wakes everyone up the next day (even Josie’s parentals) and makes them take a boat to the island of Delos. It’s a sacred holy site, which Josie learns about by reading along the way: supposedly it’s the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, fathered by Zeus and borne by the titan Leto (which I had to look up because I was confusing her with Leda) on an island that was not fixed in place, as Hera had banned Leto from giving birth on terra firma. The mythology of the place made it an important site of worship, even though nobody could live there, and today it is essentially a museum full of excavated ruins. Josie’s dad’s girlfriend thinks it’s junky, of course.

But what Helen most wants Josie to see is the top of Mount Kynthos, where Apollo was supposely born. And it’s true, the sun does feel stronger and more intense up there, and Josie senses a connection to something greater than herself. Helen knows it, and she sprinkles in a little more backstory by saying that when she got out of the hospital she knew that this was a place she had to come, for some reason. We learn that Helen tried to kill herself, not long before Josie had her heart ailment, but we don’t really learn how or why. Josie wonders if the boyfriend they shared was an impetus, but she sure as hell doesn’t ask any more questions about it. Still, they both share that getting so close to death has provided them with a new understanding of what they should do with life. Still, we start to wonder about their friendship. How close are they actually? Do they even still like each other?

Josie doesn’t help matters by immediately going to see Tom at the beach when they get back from Delos. They try to figure out how to get together without upsetting Helen, and don’t come up with much other than everybody hanging out again. After a swim and a stint of topless sunbathing, she goes back to the hotel, where she tells her dad that the suicide pilot in his script has something to live for and then puts off Helen’s attempt to go get dinner, as she needs to wait for her sneaky plan to happen. She dreams of a secret altar to Apollo, where she prays for insight and information to pass along to humans, and then she and Helen go to the same restaurant as the night before, where Tom and Pascal just happen to show up. Only Pascal’s fumbling English gives away that it was all planned, and Helen storms off, but not before revealing to Josie that the reason their mutual boyfriend hasn’t been in touch is because he died at the end of last summer. Helen has known this all along, but she has obviously kept it from Josie out of spite ... or something. I think here their friendship is officially ruined.

Josie and Tom try to salvage the evening by going out on the bay in a rowboat. While they’re out there, though, the temperamental summer winds kick up all of a sudden, and they lose their oar and can’t get it back. Tom jumps in the water to get it, but before he can get back the boat blows out to sea with Josie in it. All Josie can do is bail as it takes on water and pray that the wind stops before she sinks. And, like, literally as soon as she prays, the weather lets up and the water gets calm. She passes out in the boat and wakes up on a rocky beach, which she’s pretty sure is Delos. So she goes to try to find the archaeologists on the island, but before she can she discovers that the ruin is somehow a living city, and they welcome and worship her.

And suddenly we’re flung into a new myth, one of Pike’s own making. We learn about the muse Sryope and her best friend Phthia, granddaughter of Zeus. They are both in love with Aeneas, half-blood son of Aphrodite, and Phthia seduces him and gets him to swear an oath of fidelity before she goes back to fucking around. This pisses Sryope off, and she figures out how to get Phthia to forgive the vow: a story contest. If Sryope wins, Phthia will release Aeneas; if Phthia wins, Sryope will never tell anyone that her father is Alecto, one of the Furies that guards the underworld. Yeah, I know, and so does Pike — Furies in myth are traditionally portrayed as female, but there’s some shape-shifter tales throughout fiction. Of course Sryope basically goes back on her word immediately, telling a story of a Fury who impregnates a goddess by impersonating a handsome warrior and begats (?) a daughter, just changing the names like that hides anything. Of course Phthia gets pissed and yells at Sryope, then takes off without telling her story, never to be seen again until Alecto finds her dead and floating in the river Styx. Upon which he (she?) arrests (?) Sryope on suspicion of murder.

This is where Josie wakes up with the sunrise in the ruins of Delos. There’s a tiny marble statue of a goddess next to her, which she recognizes as Sryope, so she pockets it, but then she realizes she’s going to get in trouble if she’s found there. She gets out, hides among the tourists, and takes the first boat back to Mykonos, where her father and his girlfriend are anxiously talking to the police on the dock. Seems Tom made it back to shore and warned everyone that Josie was missing, and now that she’s back they call off the search and get everyone ready for a celebratory barbecue at the hotel. But first she tells Tom what happened, and shows him the statue, which has since the morning become flecked with clear crystal somehow. He’s not sure he believes her, but he does promise to stay with her and protect her from any more weirdness.

The girlfriend runs the barbecue, maybe out of guilt of not being more ... motherly? I don’t know. Is that really the responsibility of a thirty-something woman whose boyfriend has an eighteen-year-old daughter? I know, cultural expectations and all that bullshit. But Helen helps make the burgers, and Josie asks for two but can’t finish the first so Tom eats the other one. While she’s eating, Josie talks to her dad some more about his script, and suggests that the pilot plants the bomb on the planet but that the alien is struggling to tell him something that she’s been programmed against. Then Josie goes to bed and dreams about Sryope’s trial, where she is twisted into lying about knowing Phthia’s parentage and discusses how she shares stories and ideas with mortals, in particular a certain screenwriter and his daughter.

Josie wakes up feeling like crap. The statue is still there, but now it’s totally clear, with a red swirl in the center. She tries to call Tom, but Pascal says he’s too sick to answer the phone. She’s starting to worry about all of it, so she finds her way over to his house and realizes he needs to see a doctor. At the health center, Josie collapses in the waiting room and sees more of the trial, where Minos (the underworld judge) shows Sryope forcing the daughter’s best friend to drink poison, and then sees herself forcing the spirit of Phthia into the best friend’s dying body. Sryope realizes that it’s Alecto impersonating her, but there’s no way to provide a realistic motive without going back on her lies about Phthia and Alecto. So she accepts her punishment, which is to give up her immortality and take the place of the dying spirit in the screenwriter’s daughter.

Josie wakes up with her family around her. She asks to talk to Helen alone, because by now they both know the story. Helen tells Josie that she put ground glass in her hamburgers, and there’s no way to get it out of her system. I don’t know if that’s how it works ... isn’t finely ground glass essentially sand? Snopes says this isn’t inherently fatal, but we didn’t have the Internet in 1993 and so it scared the piss out of me at the time. Helen isn’t really upset about Tom being collateral damage, either, because he treated her wrong. She’s taken a similar revenge on their dead mutual ex, in fact. She tells Josie that this was her plot, abetted by Alecto, and all she has to do to live forever is to sacrifice somebody to the Furies — in this case, Pascal — on the summit of Mount Kynthos.

So with no hope for themselves, there’s no reason to go to the mainland hospital, but there’s still time to save Pascal. Before she goes, Josie leaves a note for her dad that tells him the planet is actually Earth, and the aliens are what humans would have become if they stayed. Then she rouses Tom out of bed and tells him about Helen’s plan, and they sneak out of the health center. They grab Pascal’s gun from the apartment, then steal a boat and rip over to Delos.

He’s already bewitched and is ready to obey Helen. There’s no other option. Josie tries to shoot her but the gun doesn’t go off. Tom (the stupid idiot who thinks he knows better than killing) knocks the gun out of Josie’s hand, and Pascal grabs it. Helen tells him to put it in his mouth and pull the trigger, which he does — but it still doesn’t go off. Josie realizes the safety must be on, but Pascal doesn’t. The gun in his mouth is enough to break his hypnosis, and he faints. Helen doesn’t realize about the safety either (I guess she thinks the gun is busted) so she pulls out a giant knife and literally lifts Tom off his feet, telling Josie she wants her to watch him suffer before she dies too.

But Josie has one more trick up her sleeve: her camera, which is in the pocket of the windbreaker she’s wearing. If she can get one good shot, maybe the flash will distract Helen enough that she can grab the gun and kill her before she kills Tom. And it’s a good shot. So good, in fact, that it lights up the entire island as though from the sun. Helen is momentarily blinded and drops the boy, and Josie has enough light to find the gun, flick the safety off, and fire six shots into Helen’s chest.

So Pascal is now safe, but Josie’s still dying, right? And Tom? Hang on a second. Josie realizes that the red in the little statuette is blood. Her godly blood. In fact, when she takes it out of her pocket, the head has turned into essentially a flip-cap. But there’s only enough for one person, so guess what. Yep, she makes Tom drink it, and once again Pike has killed off the first-person protagonist. Really — he’s done it in literally every single (YA) story written from 1PP so far. I’d say to start expecting it, only the next major one from this perspective is The Last Vampire, so ... but maybe he’s counting that as dead?

Our epilogue finds Sryope at the top of Mount Kynthos, conversing with Apollo, who she has only now realized is her own father. He is interested to know what she’s learned from her time on Earth, and as they arise into the sun she begins the tale of a girl on a plane to Greece.

And hereby we close The Immortal. I have to say I’m not mad at it. The agency of the girls and goddesses is useful, and it certainly does more with the kinky Greek myth sex than anything teachers will let you read. The parallel of the higher being dying after fulfilling an important informational mission between the narrative and the dad’s screenplay is super-thin, and I could have done without that, but Josie and Helen are kind of badasses who don’t apologize for their desires, and I’m glad. I’m also glad that this re-read gave me the thought to check on that ground-glass thing, which makes me more OK with hamburgers.

4 notes · View notes