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dykeknightrises · 7 months

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FALLING

A/N: Sooo, I never actually wrote anything like this, but this one pretty much wrote itself randomly in my brain and I kinda liked it! So I appreciate any feedback I can get and I really hope you guys enjoy it :)

(Also english is not my first language. I did check it but something may not be quite right )

Next parts: Part 2 - PROMISES Part 3 - US

She smelled like the sun. Whether this is a real thing or not, Y/N didn’t care. Right now, buried under and completely surrounded by her, Y/N would vow on whatever entity really existed that Alexia smelled like the sun.

It wasn’t always the case. Before, Alexia smelled like comfort, maybe even a little bit like being under the covers, a mug of hot chocolate between her hands while the rain poured outside. Now everything changed. Now she smelled like summer, like the water wetting your feet right on the edge on the sand on a hot day spent on the beach.

The in-between of then and now, and even the before that, if Y/N was being honest, was a rollercoaster of joy, happiness, heartbreak, and sadness. Falling for Alexia was far too easy and almost a habit for her, she had been doing that for years now.

Y/N first fell in awe of Alexia when she watched her play her first u-17 Euros, back in 2010, when she was just fifteen. Even when the Young Lionesses didn’t go very far, Y/N managed to convince her parents that they absolutely had to stay for the whole tournament.

Alexia was still a wide-eyed teenager, shy to give interviews and speak up, but so confident and skilled in the pitch that Y/N could not helped but to feel in absolute awe. It wasn’t even a question that the midfielder would be a great player and it wasn’t even a question that Y/N would start to keep up with her career the best she could, she would even use the poor excuse that the shared their position when her friends bugged her too much about it.

Y/N first feel in admiration with Alexia when she played against her during the 2012 u-19 Euros. Despite being only fifteen, Y/N was called up when someone got injured and even made the line-up for the game against Spain.

Ninety brutal minutes later that resulted in England being eliminated, Alexia made sure to speak and praise every single one of her opponents. That was the first time they ever spoke. Y/N wasn’t even sure if Alexia remembered that, but the praise the older girl gave her and the sheer amount of respect she was given made her admire Alexia as a player on a whole new level.

The “See you in a Champions League game.” that the older girl said goodbye with echoed in her head for years, until the moment she signed with Arsenal as her first professional contract a couple of years later. Y/N really hoped to play against Alexia again.

Y/N first fell in respect with Alexia in Budapest, during the Champions League final in 2019. Despite the overwhelming loss from the start, she watched as Alexia gave her blood on the pitch. One of the most agonizing games Y/N had ever watched, being able to even taste the desperation while surrounded by thousands of culés ins the stands.

She watched the absolute heartbreak the team faced, the broken stares as they watched Lyon lift the Champions League cup again. She watched as the twenty-five years old fourth captain picked her teammates up, reassured them and listened to them. She watched the midfield swallow her own despair and angst to take care of her teammates, as a captain and leader would. Y/N could help but to respect the Catalonian as player, as person. Not everybody can do that.

Y/N first fell in fondness with Alexia when she was the first to make her feel at home in Barcelona. Leaving Arsenal and home behind was terrifying, even if Lucy and Keira were in Barcelona too. It’s a new city, a new culture, a new language, new teammates, and a new sense of self.

Arriving and settling in Barcelona was easy, but fitting in and becoming a part of the team was much harder. Spending so many countless evenings and night trying to learn the language that Y/N began to neglect herself a little bit seemed like a small price to pay to be in the team. It wasn’t until Alexia herself asked to speak to you, realizing that you were unconsciously closing yourself off until you were “ready” that you realized what you were doing. Upon seeing the realization in your eyes and knowing that her mission was complete, the older woman slipped a bar of your favourite chocolate over and left with a squeeze on your shoulder.

After that, it wasn’t long until you were a part of the very chaotic Barcelona family. By the time that the Winter Break arrived, the team had settled in a very nice post-practice routine. On Mondays, the guiris got together, helping each other fit with the country. Tuesdays and Wednesdays the whole team holed up at someone’s house, usually Irene’s, and just bonded, going from watching trashy movies to destroying each other on board games. When there were no games on the weekend, the Fridays were for going out on a very non-wild night, just to eat out and spend more time with each other.

Thursdays were sacred. You and Alexia got together, spending the whole time watching old matches, nitpicking plays and dissecting games from opponents or your favourite players. The night usually ending with you cooking, her cleaning and crashing at the bed after taking Nala for her night walk.

Y/N first fell in love with Alexia after the Winter Break, when Alexia was opening the gift, she brought from England. It was a grand thing, but the older woman’s eyes shone so brightly when the Christmas tree’s light sparked that Y/N was sure her heart skipped a beat.

Being in love with Alexia was easy. Between the team’s bonding and their own, all their weekdays were spent together, and Alexia usually dragged Y/N over for lunch with the rest of the Putellas family, where she fit right in. Her days were filled with Alexia’s presence and her nights were filled with dreams of her.

Y/N never entertained the thought of Alexia loving her back. Not she was an asshole or anything, but Alexia was different. Keeping her feelings to herself, not even telling her best friends came naturally, as she knew they would encourage her to try something, but that is just because they didn’t see Alexia like she did.

Friendships with Spaniards were very confusing at first. They were very touchy and very feely and, at first, it made Y/N a bit uneasy to be able the differ when they were hitting on each other and when they were just being friends. She finally settled in taking everything as a friendship moment if she wasn’t told otherwise and left at that.

On a Thursday, instead of watching a game like their usual, Alexia wanted to go dancing. They got ready at arrived at the Sala Apollo when it was already packed, heading to the bar, and having a couple of drinks before the older woman dragged them both to the dance floor. The closeness and intimacy of dancing with each other came easily for them. Letting the heavy bass of reggaeton guide their moves and being pressed together was almost as natural as cuddling on the couch after a movie.

It wasn’t until Alexia’s hands began to wonder that Y/N though better about the whole night. When the older woman’s lips found a spot on her neck and her hands found their place on her hips after squeezing her ass, Y/N was gone. Turning around and kissing Alexia, they were locked in a much wilder dance at that point. Not staying too long after that was natural, as it was sharing a bed of a whole different manner.

Y/N first fell in heartbreak with Alexia when she called their night a mistake. Waking up the next day, surrounded of filled with the midfielder, Y/N smiled and lost herself on the skin of Alexia’s back being hit by sun. Having coffee turned sour on her mouth after Alexia’s words and feeling has heart break on her chest was hard enough, but she could let the older woman know the damage her words had done, she loved her too much for that.

Leaving Alexia’s house that day was one of the easiest and hardest things Y/N had ever done. It was easy because she desperately needed to leave, she needed to let the tears stream down her cheeks away from the other woman’s praying gaze. It was hard because it closed the door on any possibility of the words being a mistake themselves. After promising Alexia, and lying through her teeth, that everything was okay, Y/N left.

People say grieve has five stages. Y/N was no expert, but she was pretty sure that whoever was supposed to go through them was the person grieving, so she didn’t quite understand Alexia’s sudden avoidance. The captain found new teammates to do all the training exercises together, spoke to her only when necessary and cancelled all Their Thursdays for the past few weeks.

A part of her told herself that maybe Alexia felt guilty, maybe she wanted to take the word Mistake back. That part was very strong, it was pulsating, it gave her hope. That part told her to not give up and just give her part.

Y/N arrived just in time on the locker room to overhear Alexia answering a question about a date. Her latest one. On a Thursday. She couldn’t pay a lot of attention to the midfielder answer without had eyes tearing up, so she tried to block the conversation as much as she could, and it was going pretty damn well until she lied to her teeth once again when someone asked if she didn’t mind that the dates where always on a Thursday.

The called up to represent the Lionesses came as a blessing, giving her a break from the club. It was much easier to be her usual self, joke around with her teammates and going on a full-blown prank war against Georgia when she could pretend Alexia didn’t exist. It was also much easing swallowing down her hopes and downloading Tinder when she was sure Alexia would not pop-up on her screen.

Swiping left on all the women that the app showed her was unconscious. Y/N didn’t even realize she was doing that until Leah caught her with the app opened and started to swipe with her. When the captain asked for the billionth time what was wrong with the last woman, the only answer she had to give was that none of them were her. That prompted her to tell her best friend everything. After convincing Leah to not do something stupid, the captain just told you not to worry and that she would find you the perfect date.

With the time with the national team up, Y/N flew back to Barcelona, smiling as the she sees the city lighting up against the night sky. She barely has time to settle back before Leah texts her that she found her a great date and saying that they will both fly out for the Champions League match in a couple of weeks.

Between trying to find out more information on Leah’s mysterious friend and the sting that came whenever Alexia promptly ignored her, Y/N days passed slowly. It’s easy to distract herself on the days that are occupied by the team, but Thursdays were the worst. The hurt that came the being subbed out of Alexia’s life was just more prominent on these days and Y/N didn’t quite know what to do about it.

The Champions League finally came and with it, Leah and her friend being in town. The date was going to happen the day before the match and Y/N wasn’t sure whether the anxious feeling she had were for the match or for the date.

Getting ready was almost automatic. A nice short black dress paired up with a light makeup as they would go to dinner at a nice restaurant that Y/N absolutely loved. Waiting for the time to go out, she turned the TV on started watching and old match, absently minded remembering that it was a Thursday. Not that any of that mattered anymore.

The doorbell rang just as Ronaldinho scored a goal, making her tear her eyes away from the game. Y/N walk to the door in confusion, not expecting anyone today. The team was doing their own Thursday thing and Leah was out with Lucy and Keira, leaving literally no one to be at her doorstep at almost eight.

Hazel eyes greeted her upon opening the door. Alexia stood in front of her, in her comfiest hoodie and sweatpants, the beanie tucked in her head, cheeks rosy from the wind. Her gaze, holding hope and a thousand secrets, wandered through you figure, before settling back in your own eyes.

“I was hoping we could have our usual Thursday? I have a lot that I need to say to you.”

#woso imagine #woso imagines #woso x reader #alexia putellas imagine #alexia putellas x reader

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cressida-jayoungr · 1 year

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One Dress a Day Challenge

Not-a-Dress November

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time / Gemma Arterton as Princess Tamina

How to dress like a desert adventurer and look chic while doing it! I suspect this costume is mostly fantasy, but it does at least give a flavor of the middle eastern setting. Bonus points for the hooded cape that swirls dramatically behind her when she runs. The closeup picture gives a good view of the embroidery on the vest.

This movie is something of a guilty pleasure of mine. I was sorry that it didn't do well enough to merit any sequels, but then again, sequels too often ruin what you liked about the original, so maybe it's just as well.

#prince of persia #not-a-dress november #gemma arterton #one dress a day challenge #one dress a week challenge #movie costumes #prince of persia: the sands of time #2010 movies #2010 films #prince of persia movie #fantasy costumes #fantasy costume #not a dress november #princess tamina #all the embroidery

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pedroam-bang · 1 year

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Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time (2010)

#2010 #film #movie #gaming #Prince Of Persia #The Sands Of Time #Jake Gyllenhaal #Dastan #Gemma Arterton #Tamina #Persian Empire #Dagger Of Time

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hotvintagepoll · 1 hour

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Do you have any opinions on modern (post-1970s) movies that you feel capture the essence (in a good way) of Old Movies?

No, unfortunately. That doesn't mean I don't like modern movies or that modern movies aren't good, but modern movies—and here I'm really using modern to mean post-2010, so contemporary movies—have different standards for pacing, characterization, budget, and production that make it harder (or impossible) to capture some of the magic of old movies. Even when modern movies clearly try to emulate that old-movie feeling—I'm thinking of La La Land, The Artist, The Shape of Water, In the Heights—they play the homage too broadly, or they ignore crucial components that make the original films work.

There's kind of too much to go into here without writing a full essay, but essentially, the Old Hollywood system—ugly, failed beast as she was—made some movies simply more accessible to make, due to the ongoing storage of props, sets, master craftsmen, crew, and onscreen talent that could move from one movie to the next without pause. If you needed a dancer, he was already on staff. If you needed a fancy bed, it was already in the warehouse. That kind of longterm storage is invaluable if you want to crank out movies quickly and cheaply because it saves so much time on individual negotiation and sourcing. Modern production companies have to work out individual contracts for every actor on every film; crew members have to negotiate rental contracts and source pieces from scratch; if you need someone with specialist skills, you have to contract them specially at a high rate, which a lot of small companies can't (or won't) budget to do. There's sand in the wheels where there needn't be any. It's wasteful, and costly, but that's the system modern movies are made with.

Which all means that even if the modern movie system wanted to make a classic movie musical just like the old ones, they couldn't, because the talent isn't already there—it hasn't been trained up enough, and there's not that breadth of knowledge you can only get from people who have been allowed to work in the same department in the same place for decades. Movies like La La Land fail, for me, because they present themselves as descendants of Fred Astaire or Busby Berkley movies, while missing the bit where Fred Astaire was a master of his craft. When you watch Fred Astaire dance—or Moira Shearer, or the Nicholas Brothers, or Ann Miller—you are watching a true artist at work, purposely showcased by the studios because they already have them on contract. Modern movies, on the other hand, tend to take people who already have star talent (as actors) and try to convert them into dancers/singers—or they pull dancers/singers off of Broadway, but then they don't have the star power built in. You end up with lackluster musicals where no one truly knows what they're doing, or they do but they're not built up enough by the studios to sell. And that's me discussing just on-screen talent for musicals—there is a huge loss behind the scenes, as well, for all kinds of movies, where roles that would have been filled by union crew who moved continuously from one job to the next have been swapped for freelance labor who live with immense turnover, financial insecurity, and knowledge loss. You could hand me the budget and I could try to make an old movie, but the industry itself has changed so much it's impossible to recapture that charm of steady, niche talent, the amazing possibilities of bonkers set design, and the ability to take a risk on a smaller movie because the other films being produced by the same studio can help balance the budget.

I've talked way, way too much about all of this! Sorry, I just have a lot of thoughts—and the one above is just one of them; the talent loss and storage issues are only facets of a much bigger problem that extends to how we watch movies today, how we market them, what we expect of them, and what's allowed in them. It's a crying shame because the talent is still there, but times change and so does the industry, for better or for worse. (And, just again to clarify, I don't think modern movies are bad—they're just missing a lot of the juice old movies got to play with, even if there's more talent available than ever before.)

#asks #hotvintagethoughts

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alphynix · 17 days

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Jiangxichelys neimongolensis was a terrestrial turtle that was part of an extinct group known as nanhsiungchelyids, whose closest living relatives today are the aquatic softshell turtles.

(This species was previously known as "Zangerlia” neimongolensis, but has since been moved into the genus Jiangxichelys instead.)

It lived towards the end of the Cretaceous, about 75-71 million years ago, in what is now the Gobi Desert – which at the time was more of a semi-arid climate with both rivers and sand dunes.

Its 60cm long (~2') carapace had a long wide shape that made it appear rather flattened from the front, but not to quite as much an extreme as its larger American cousin Basilemys.

Several fairly well-preserved specimens have been found that appear to have been buried alive, probably either engulfed by sudden sandstorms or trapped in collapsing burrows. This has preserved some anatomical details previously unknown in nanhsiungchelyids, such as the pattern of scales on top of the head and the presence of large bony osteoderms on the underside of the front toes, which may have aided with traction on loose sandy ground.

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NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon

References:

Brinkman, Donald, and Jiang-Hua Peng. "A new species of Zangerlia (Testudines: Nanhsiungchelyidae) from the Upper Cretaceous redbeds at Bayan Mandahu, Inner Mongolia, and the relationships of the genus." Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 33.4 (1996): 526-540. https://doi.org/10.1139/e96-041

Brinkman, Donald B., et al. "New exceptionally well-preserved specimens of “Zangerlia” neimongolensis from Bayan Mandahu, Inner Mongolia, and their taxonomic significance." Comptes Rendus Palevol 14.6-7 (2015): 577-587. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crpv.2014.12.005

Jerzykiewicz, T., et al. "Djadokhta Formation correlative strata in Chinese Inner Mongolia: an overview of the stratigraphy, sedimentary geology, and paleontology and comparisons with the type locality in the pre-Altai Gobi." Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 30.10 (1993): 2180-2195. https://doi.org/10.1139/e93-190

Tong, Haiyan, and Lu Li. "A revision of the holotype of Nanhsiungchelys wuchingensis, Ye, 1966 (Testudines: Cryptodira: Trionychoidae: Nanhsiungchelyidae)." Cretaceous Research 95 (2019): 151-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cretres.2018.11.003

Tong, Haiyan, et al. "New material of Jiangxichelys ganzhouensis Tong & Mo, 2010 (Testudines: Cryptodira: Nanhsiungchelyidae) and its phylogenetic and palaeogeographical implications." Geological Magazine 154.3 (2017): 456-464. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0016756816000108

Wikipedia contributors. “Nanhsiungchelyidae.” Wikipedia, 19 Nov. 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanhsiungchelyidae

#science illustration #paleontology #paleoart #palaeoblr #jiangxichelys #zangerlia #nanhsiungchelyidae #cryptodira #turtle #testudines #pantestudines #reptile #art #ancient mutant fossil turtles #turtle power

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