Pizza tastes best cold, a little rubbery, between 3 and 5 am. Clint’s done the research, okay, he knows.
That sounds kinda facetious, but it’s more true than looking at him’d have you believe; his food blog is all kinds of successful, racking up the awards, paying for his apartment building and the endless medical bills for his dumb dog. He’s the kind of guy who’s invited to restaurant openings, now, shambling up in a purple Henley and worn jeans, grinning lopsided and embarrassed at the press. Somehow, he’s ended up friends with Tony Stark, who couldn’t stop laughing when Clint’d compared some up-and-comer’s escargot to ‘bronchitis backwash’ and kept inviting him over to insult craft beers.
So pizza maybe isn’t exactly what he’s known for, but pizza’s what he knows best. Cold, rubbery, 3-5am and, inconveniently, a 24 hour cooling off period for optimal rubberisation.
Now night pizza, it ain’t exactly a culinary wonderland. Tends to the dregs and the good-enough-for-drunks, poorly presented and with a focus on the smell. Clint has been lured by skilful wafting too many times to be anything other than wary when he walks past the new place on 9th, takes in a lungful of basil and garlic and cooked meat and melted cheese.
It’s the pizza sweet spot, 3.45 with the night shaking out its feathers and settling in all warm and close, clouds holding in the last of the fall’s remaining heat. The air in his apartment had felt a little too thick for breathing, but out here it’s fine and beautifully fragrant, and he’s heading through the door before he even takes note of the name.
There’s a note taped to the counter – ‘display cases are for assholes, good food is worth the wait’. Clint’s, frankly, a little in love, even before the beer-cap bead curtain clatters and the most beautiful man to ever scowl like he wants to kill him steps through.
The year is 2018. Your bills are on autopay. You just got paid and you still have $1200 from the last check. When you want something, you buy it without moving money around. Your credit cards are paid off. You and your friends have 2 international trips planned and paid for this year. Your parents are in great health and you’re able to help if they need anything. You love your job. Your desired creative career is falling into place and you get to take your little cousins to Six Flags and Universal Studios over the Summer. Your relationships are healthy and supportive. All of the toxic energy from the past 6 years is gone. You going to concerts, eating good across the states and your crib has art and warmth throughout. 2018 is going to be so good to you.
[Anon #2] Heartsrunwild told Seb how she is being dragged through the mud and being called a stalker, when she saw him (again) at RICC today. Like maybe stop fanning the flames? I can’t with this woman, she is old enough to know better. She flew across the world for this trip, saw him in LA (two days in a row), and now followed him to RI and is seeing him again for another two days. She needs to slow her roll a LOT.
The FS mod has her own reasons for not adding fuel to the fire. That’s fine. She doesn’t have to – I’ll stoke the whole goddamn thing myself.
Let’s be clear: what the heartsrunwild girl did was NOT OK. Was she the only fan at the con trying to find out where he was staying? I’m sure not. But she was the one posting about it, and gathering herself a little army of cheerleaders, and even now she has no shame about it. She thinks anyone would do the same.
Wrong.
I’ve gone to cons. I’ve met and talked to people who go to cons frequently. And magically NONE OF THEM HAVE EVER TRIED TO STALK HIM AT HIS HOTEL. They were fucking happy to get to meet him at this autograph table and during the photo op. They were grateful. It was enough for them.
In a word, this girl is greedy as fuck. He’s been nice to her every time she’s met him, and still it was not enough for her. Meeting him twice in LA and multiple times throughout the day in Rhode Island was not enough. Still she thought she had the right to stalk him to his hotel so she could “talk” to him even more. Because he was soooo excited to see her, right? Surely he’d be just as excited to see her if she knocked on his fucking hotel room door, right?
Wrong.
(How can someone not realize that the last thing he would need after a whole day of socializing with fans, is for more fans to interrupt his down time?)
So no. I will not take this lightly. I will not dismiss it as harmless fan behavior.
Sure, I get not making a big deal that she “brushed his abs” or whatever during the photo op. Was it kind of stupid that she bothered to even post that? Yes, it was an attention-whorey kind of comment. But it’s harmless. They were picking him up, etc. I don’t think she was being inappropriate.
But trying to find out where he was staying is a WHOLE different level of inappropriate, and that should always be condemned and loudly, lest any other fan get it in their head that “Oh it’s just an innocent little thing that everyone does.” NO. Not everyone tries to stalk their favs. Some respect their privacy and respect them as people, and don’t trying to huntthem down like animals in a fucking game preserve, which is what she was doing. She’s been hunting him across the whole of the goddamn fucking United States, like she can force herself into his presence enough that he’ll, what, be in love with her? Invite her up to his hotel so they can drink and braid each other’s hair and talk late into the night?
Get real. You’re a fan, hun. He’s a celebrity. Stay in your fucking lane and realize you’re no more special than any other fan, and you don’t deserve any special treatment.
[Anon #2] Heartsrunwild told Seb how she is being dragged through the mud and being called a stalker, when she saw him (again) at RICC today. Like maybe stop fanning the flames? I can’t with this woman, she is old enough to know better. She flew across the world for this trip, saw him in LA (two days in a row), and now followed him to RI and is seeing him again for another two days. She needs to slow her roll a LOT.
The FS mod has her own reasons for not adding fuel to the fire. That’s fine. She doesn’t have to – I’ll stoke the whole goddamn thing myself.
Let’s be clear: what the heartsrunwild girl did was NOT OK. Was she the only fan at the con trying to find out where he was staying? I’m sure not. But she was the one posting about it, and gathering herself a little army of cheerleaders, and even now she has no shame about it. She thinks anyone would do the same.
Wrong.
I’ve gone to cons. I’ve met and talked to people who go to cons frequently. And magically NONE OF THEM HAVE EVER TRIED TO STALK HIM AT HIS HOTEL. They were fucking happy to get to meet him at this autograph table and during the photo op. They were grateful. It was enough for them.
In a word, this girl is greedy as fuck. He’s been nice to her every time she’s met him, and still it was not enough for her. Meeting him twice in LA and multiple times throughout the day in Rhode Island was not enough. Still she thought she had the right to stalk him to his hotel so she could “talk” to him even more. Because he was soooo excited to see her, right? Surely he’d be just as excited to see her if she knocked on his fucking hotel room door, right?
Wrong.
(How can someone not realize that the last thing he would need after a whole day of socializing with fans, is for more fans to interrupt his down time?)
So no. I will not take this lightly. I will not dismiss it as harmless fan behavior.
Sure, I get not making a big deal that she “brushed his abs” or whatever during the photo op. Was it kind of stupid that she bothered to even post that? Yes, it was an attention-whorey kind of comment. But it’s harmless. They were picking him up, etc. I don’t think she was being inappropriate.
But trying to find out where he was staying is a WHOLE different level of inappropriate, and that should always be condemned and loudly, lest any other fan get it in their head that “Oh it’s just an innocent little thing that everyone does.” NO. Not everyone tries to stalk their favs. Some respect their privacy and respect them as people, and don’t trying to huntthem down like animals in a fucking game preserve, which is what she was doing. She’s been hunting him across the whole of the goddamn fucking United States, like she can force herself into his presence enough that he’ll, what, be in love with her? Invite her up to his hotel so they can drink and braid each other’s hair and talk late into the night?
Get real. You’re a fan, hun. He’s a celebrity. Stay in your fucking lane and realize you’re no more special than any other fan, and you don’t deserve any special treatment.
You probably don’t know this woman: her name is Franca Viola. She was born in Alcamo, Sicily, in 1947, during a time where, see, things for women were deeply different.
This is her when she was 17.
She was 17 when, on the 26th of December, 1965, she was kidnapped by her former boyfriend, Filippo Melodia, the son of a local mobster, and a few of his friends: she had broken the engagement with him a couple of years prior, when she was 15 and he was 23, and he couldn’t accept it. He kept her segregated in a farmhouse for 8 days and raped her, before she was found and freed by the police.
At that time, the Italian law stood with her kidnapper and rapist, as it stated that if the rapist married his victim, then the crime was virtually erased, and, had the guilty part already been prosecuted and convicted, the trial and the sentence would cease. This kind of marriage was called “rehabilitating marriage,” as it was believed that the victim, and her family, had to fix the dishonour caused by the rape.
Incredible, isn’t it? Not really. In an area where families still used to hang the sheet dirty with blood to their balcony after the first wedding night to prove the virginity of the woman to the entire town, the law and the public opinion still expected women to marry their abusers to mantain their honour.
Franca refused to marry Melodia. Knowing that the entire town – and, later, the whole country – could turn its back at her, knowing that she was going to be mocked, frowned upon, and insulted, she denounced him. Her family, who, contrarily to many other families, stood with her and supported her choice, needed to be guarded at all times by a handful of policemen, having been threatened by Melodia and his family. Franca was assisted by a brilliant lawyer. The trial ended up being reported by Italy’s major newspapers, and Franca, the first woman – girl – to refuse rehabilitating marriage, quickly became an example of bravery for many, many other women.
In court, Melodia tried to turn the judge against her. He said she’d already hooked up with him when they were together. He tried to escape conviction.
He was convicted for kidnapping anyway, and justly. Eight years later, when he got out, he was shot dead by an unknown killer.
Despite earlier threats that she was dishonoured, and that she wasn’t going to find anyone willing to marry her, she married Giuseppe, a childhood friend, in 1968, who stated that he wasn’t afraid of any possible acts of revenge from Melodia. He allegedly said said, “I’d rather live ten years with you than a lifetime with another woman.” About her dad, who supported her every step, Franca recently said, “My father Bernardo came [to get me] unshaven, with a week’s old beard: I could not shave if you were not there, he said. What do you want to do, Franca? I will not marry him. All right, you put your hand, I will put one hundred. This sentence, he said. I just want you to be happy, nothing else. He took me home and he did the great effort, not me. It was him who put up with those who no longer greeted him, his friends gone. The shame, the dishonour. His head up high. He wanted only what was good for me.”
When he heard about her wedding, even Pope Paul VI asked to meet her to congratulate her.
Her trial was the final push to erase the law about rehabilitating marriage and honour killings, which also allowed “mitigating circumstances” if the killer had acted upon jealousy or to restore his honour (for instance, if a husband walked in on his wife cheating on him, and killed both her and her lover). But that didn’t happen until 1981.
Rape was finally considered a “crime against the person,” instead of a crime “against the morals”, only in 1996.
She still lives in Alcamo; she says that, sometimes, she still sees her kidnappers, and whilst she greets them, they lower her gaze in shame. Franca has never, not once, lowered her gaze, and that’s why she changed history.
This is just a tiny post to remember how small acts of courage can change history and change the shape of a nation – and as a woman, an Italian, a Sicilian woman, I want to thank Franca for saying ‘no’ and – perhaps by chance – changing the history of Italy.
Reblogging again for International Women’s Day, in celebration of the women who changed history.
This is Franca Viola today, an elegant and gentle woman, now grandmother of a little girl.
In 2014, on this day, she was honoured as Grande Ufficiale al merito della Repubblica italiana – Great official for merit of Italy – for her role in fighting the misoginyst mentality of those times, and contributed to re-think the approach towards rape and the role of women in Italian society.
Excuse me while I get extremely emotional for a minute. Last night I was blown away how amazing The Doldrums was. Every single second was absolutely beautiful. But something that really astounded me, and has since his introduction in A. Malcolm, was how Yi Tien Cho’s character has been portrayed.
Representation matters. A lot. But what’s more important than simply having POC represented on in mainstream media is the production behind that understanding *why* it’s important. How it affects the people watching – both POC and non-POC alike. Because whether we like it or not, mainstream media – television in particular – shapes how people view the world and how they view cultures not their own. I was so moved by it I had to tweet this out to show my gratitude.
Maril + Caitriona liking this tweet is so much more than a simple like. It shows that the cast + crew alike understand that, yes there are people like me out there watching. People who were absolutely terrified that my culture was going to be reduced down to a caricature rendering of outdated stereotypical views. These likes were reassurance. These likes meant, “Yes, we see you. Yes, we understand. We see the value.” Simple statements that nearly moved me to tears.
This production not only understands these failings of an originally poorly and offensively drawn character, but they didn’t take the easy way out. Instead of taking out his character entirely, pushing him to the background with no lines or meaning to speak of, or whitewashing him to the point of unrecognizableness, they decide to go that extra mile. They gave his character depth, meaning, purpose – they gave him true life for the first time ever. And most importantly they gave him and all the viewers respect.
I will never not be grateful to the entire production for this change and never not applaud them for not caving to the pressures of a dominantly white Hollywood culture. All my praise and applause to you, Outlander. Thank you.
It’s my last Veterans Day in active duty status and I’d be eternally grateful if you could help with my transition back into civilian life. All it takes is a reblog. Thank you!
It feels like just yesterday that i started making art for this fandom, and thank you my friends for always supporting me and liking my art, your support and love kept me going and i really appreciate that. I’ve been debating whether to start a print shop for some time now and once i start doing that, i found its not as scary as it seemed, i even had a lot of fun putting my things up there XD Anyways, reblog & like are always welcome! And if you buy something from me i’d really love to know if you like them! So don’t be shy to come and say hi!
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