#....Mato has a Brother Complex

[radicalrascals]

The Gentleman Thief

Original Character | FC: Pedro Pascal

Threads | Headcanons | Aesthetics | Open Starters

NAME: Gabriel Luis Herrán

AGE: in his 40s

SPECIES: human

PROFESSION: thief, con-man

Short Bio

For the first nine years of his life, Gabriel, son of Chilean immigrants building a life in California, had a sheltered and happy childhood. Though when his parents died, he and his older brother were left at the mercy of the foster care system and got quickly separated. Gabriel was difficult to place, handed from foster parents to foster parents and back into the orphanage. Every set back made him more rebellious, and he quickly realised he's alone in this world and if he wanted to survive he had to take what he needed.

Forward a couple years, Gabriel - or most recently 'Diego' - makes a living as a professional thief. He's pulled a couple of heists that gave the police a mighty headache, and made enemies in all sorts of places.

Relationships

Steven Carlisle > [Tag] | [Ship]

Theo Matos > [Tag]

Patrick Moran > [Tag]

Playlist

Don't Stop Me Now by Queen from Jazz (1978)

Full Steam Spacemachine by Royal Republic from We Are the Royal (2010)

Get A Grip by Aerosmith from Get A Grip (1993)

Here I Go Again by Whitesnake from Saints & Sinners (1982)

I'm Still Standing by Elton John from Too Low For Zero (1983)

Detailed Profile

FULL NAME: Gabriel Luis Herrán

KNOWN AS: Diego Alvarez, Álex Prieto, Michael Morgan, Carlos Ángel Peña Cruz, Rafael Guttierez, Héctor Morte

NICKNAMES: Gabe, Gabo, Magpie / Urraca

~~~~~~~~~~~~

SPECIES: human

RESIDENCE: always on the run move

PROFESSION: thief, con-man

~~~~~~~~~~~~

AGE: in his 40s

DATE OF BIRTH: November 3rd

PLACE OF BIRTH: Mendota, California, USA

NATIONALITY: US American (of Chilean decent)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

PARENTS: Sofía Herrán (†) & José Mateo Herrán (†)

SIBLINGS: Matias Diego Herrán (†, older brother)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

FACE CLAIM: Pedro Pascal

HEIGHT: 5ft 9 (1.8m)

NOTABLE FEATURES: Gabriel has a scar on his shoulder where he had a tattoo removed; he usually sports a well kept moustache but depending on the role he plays he sometimes shaves or lets his beard grow out of control

STYLE: Gabriel doesn't have his own style, he's used to playing roles and those roles have certain styles. He can be the inconspicuous everyman or wear expensive clothes and pretend to be high society. When he's by himself however he usually only wears a t-shirt and briefs, less commonly jeans.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

LANGUAGES: English (native) , Spanish (native) , French (fluent)

SPEECH MANNERISM: Gabriel has a low and soothing voice and speaks both English and Spanish without accent. However, he will fake an accent if it suits his role.

STRENGTHS: masterfully hatches and conducts complex plans and is an expert in picking locks, ye olde skill of pickpocketing, and charming the socks off anyone he needs on his side

WEAKNESSES: lone wolf with trust issues, stupidly prideful, deadly allergic to peanuts, fiery temperament

INTERESTS: enjoying life to the fullest; the thrill of stealing; hopeless romantic who enjoys a good flirt

VICES: vengeful, cleptomaniac; recreationally smokes and drinks

~~~~~~~~~~~~

NSFW

Gabriel is romantically and sexually attracted to men, and a romantic to boot. He will woo his partner like there is no tomorrow, and though he will go to great lengths to keep his true identity as a thief a secret, he would absolutely switch sides for the right man.

Bonus points for muses with the following face claims: Oscar Isaac, Wagner Moura, Ethan Hawke, Diego Luna

[everwisteria]

Dr. Taylor Alison Swift (Full NYU speech)

Hi, I'm Taylor!

Last time I was in a stadium this size, I was dancing in heels and wearing a glittery leotard. This outfit is much more comfortable.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to NYU‘s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bill Berkeley and all the trustees and members of the board, NYU’s President Andrew Hamilton, Provost Katherine Fleming, and the faculty and alumni here today who have made this day possible. I feel so proud to share this day with my fellow honorees Susan Hockfield and Felix Matos Rodriguez, who humble me with the ways they improve our world with their work. As for me, I’m 90% sure the main reason I’m here is because I have a song called ‘22’. And let me just say, I am elated to be here with you today as we celebrate and graduate New York University’s Class of 2022.

Not a single one of us here today has done it alone. We are each a patchwork quilt of those who have loved us, those who have believed in our futures, those who showed us empathy and kindness or told us the truth even when it wasn’t easy to hear. Those who told us we could do it when there was absolutely no proof of that. Someone read stories to you and taught you to dream and offered up some moral code of right and wrong for you to try and live by. Someone tried their best to explain every concept in this insanely complex world to the child that was you, as you asked a bazillion questions like ‘how does the moon work?’ and ‘why can we eat salad but not grass?’ And maybe they didn’t do it perfectly. No one ever can. Maybe they aren’t with us anymore, and in that case I hope you’ll remember them today. If they are here in this stadium, I hope you’ll find your own way to express your gratitude for all the steps and missteps that have led us to this common destination.

I know that words are supposed to be my ‘thing’, but I will never be able to find the words to thank my mom and my dad, and my brother, Austin, for the sacrifices they made every day so that I could go from singing in coffee houses to standing up here with you all today because no words would ever be enough. To all the incredible parents, family members, mentors, teachers, allies, friends and loved ones here today who have supported these students in their pursuit of educational enrichment, let me say to you now: Welcome to New York. It’s been waiting for you.

I’d like to thank NYU for making me, technically, on paper at least, a doctor. Not the type of doctor you would want around in the case of an emergency, unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic bridge section. Or if your emergency was that you needed a person who can name over 50 breeds of cats in one minute.

I never got to have the normal college experience, per se. I went to public high school until tenth grade and finished my education doing homeschool work on the floors of airport terminals. Then I went out on the road for a radio tour, which sounds incredibly glamorous but in reality it consisted of a rental car, motels, and my mom and I pretending to have loud mother daughter fights with each other during boarding so no one would want the empty seat between us on Southwest.

As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college, imagining the posters I’d hang on the wall of my freshmen dorm. I even said the ending of my music video for my song “Love Story” at my fantasy imaginary college, where I meet a male model reading a book on the grass and with one single glance, we realize we had been in love in our past lives. Which is exactly what you guys all experienced at some point in the last 4 years, right?

But I, really can’t complain about not having a normal college experience to you because you went to NYU during a global pandemic, being essentially locked into your dorms and having to do classes over Zoom. Everyone in college during normal times stresses about test scores, but on top of that you also had to pass like a thousand COVID tests. I imagine the idea of a normal college experience was all you wanted too. But in this case you and I both learned that you don’t always get all the things in the bag that you selected from the menu in the delivery service, that is life. You get what you get. And as I would like to say to you wholeheartedly, you should be very proud of what you’ve done with it. Today you leave New York University and then go out into the world searching for what’s next. And so will I.

So as a rule, I try not to give anyone unsolicited advice unless they ask for it. I’ll go into this more later. I guess I have been officially solicited in this situation, to impart whatever wisdom I might have to tell you things that have helped me, so far, in my life. Please bear in mind that I, in no way, feel qualified to tell you what to do. You’ve worked and struggled and sacrificed and studied and dreamed your way here today and so, you know what you’re doing. You’ll do things differently than I did them and for different reasons.

So I won’t tell you what to do because no one likes that. I will, however, give you some life hacks I wish I knew when I was starting out my dreams of a career, and navigating life, love, pressure, choices, shame, hope and friendship.

The first of which is -- life can be heavy, especially if you try to carry it all at once. Part of growing up and moving into new chapters of your life is about catch and release. What I mean by that is, knowing what things to keep, and what things to release. You can’t carry all things, all grudges, all updates on your ex, all enviable promotions your school bully got at the hedge fund his uncle started. Decide what is yours to hold and let the rest go. Oftentimes the good things in your life are lighter anyway, so there’s more room for them. One toxic relationship can outweigh so many wonderful, simple joys. You get to pick what your life has time and room for. Be discerning.

Secondly, learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. Cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime. Even the term ‘cringe’ might someday be deemed ‘cringe.’

I promise you, you’re probably doing or wearing something right now that you will look back on later and find revolting and hilarious. You can’t avoid it, so don’t try to. For example, I had a phase where, for the entirety of 2012, I dressed like a 1950s housewife. But you know what? I was having fun. Trends and phases are fun. Looking back and laughing is fun.

And while we’re talking about things that make us squirm but really shouldn’t, I’d like to say that I’m a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things. It seems to me that there is a false stigma around eagerness in our culture of ‘unbothered ambivalence.’ This outlook perpetuates the idea that it’s not cool to ‘want it.’ That people who don’t try hard are fundamentally more chic than people who do. And I wouldn’t know because I have been a lot of things but I’ve never been an expert on ‘chic.’ But I’m the one who’s up here so you have to listen to me when I say this: "Never be ashamed of trying. Effortlessness is a myth." The people who wanted it the least were the ones I wanted to date and be friends with in high school. The people who want it most are the people I now hire to work for my company.

I started writing songs when I was twelve and since then, it’s been the compass guiding my life, and in turn, my life guided my writing. Everything I do is just an extension of my writing, whether it’s directing videos or a short film, creating the visuals for a tour, or standing on stage performing. Everything is connected by my love of the craft, the thrill of working through ideas and narrowing them down and polishing it all up in the end. Editing. Waking up in the middle of the night and throwing out the old idea because you just thought of a newer, better one. A plot device that ties the whole thing together. There’s a reason they call it a hook. Sometimes a string of words just ensnares me and I can’t focus on anything until it’s been recorded or written down.

As a songwriter I’ve never been able to sit still, or stay in one creative place for too long. I’ve made and released 11 albums and in the process, I’ve switched genres from country to pop to alternative to folk and this might sound like a very songwriter-centric line of discussion but in a way, I really do think we are all writers. And most of us write in a different voice for different situations. You write differently in your Instagram stories than you do your senior thesis. You send a different type of email to your boss than you do your best friend from home. We are all literary chameleons and I think it’s fascinating. It’s just a continuation of the idea that we are so many things, all the time. And I know it can be really overwhelming figuring out who to be, and when. Who you are now and how to act in order to get where you want to go. I have some good news: It’s totally up to you. I also have some terrifying news: It’s totally up to you.

I said to you earlier that I don’t ever offer advice unless someone asks me for it, and now I’ll tell you why. As a person who started my very public career at the age of 15, it came with a price. And that price was years of unsolicited advice. Being the youngest person in every room for over a decade meant that I was constantly being issued warnings from older members of the music industry, the media, interviewers, executives. And this advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings. See, I was a teenager at a time when our society was absolutely obsessed with the idea of having perfect young female role models. It felt like every interview I did included slight barbs by the interviewer about me one day ‘running off the rails.’ and that meant a different thing to every person said it me. So I became a young adult while being fed the message that if I didn’t make any mistakes, all the children of America would grow up to be perfect angels. However, if I did slip up, the entire earth would fall off its axis and it would be entirely my fault and I would go to pop star jail forever and ever. It was all centered around the idea that mistakes equal failure and ultimately, the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life. -- This has not been my experience. My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life.

And being embarrassed when you mess up is part of the human experience. Getting back up, dusting yourself off and seeing who still wants to hang out with you afterward and laugh about it? That’s a gift.

The times I was told no or wasn’t included, wasn’t chosen, didn’t win, didn’t make the cut, looking back, it really feels like those moments were as important, if not more crucial, than the moments I was told ‘yes.’

Not being invited to the parties and sleepovers in my hometown made me feel hopelessly lonely, but because I felt alone, I would sit in my room and write the songs that would get me a ticket somewhere else. Having label executives in Nashville tell me that only 35-year-old housewives listen to country music and there was no place for a 13-year-old on their roster made me cry in the car on the way home. But then I’d post my songs on my MySpace and yes, MySpace, and I would message with other teenagers like me who loved country music, but just didn’t have anyone singing from their perspective. Having journalists write in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive me to be made me feel like I was living in some weird simulation, but it also made me look inward to learn about who I actually am. Having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game was not a great way to date in my teens and twenties, but it taught me to protect my private life fiercely. Being publicly humiliated over and over again at a young age was excruciatingly painful but it forced me to devalue the ridiculous notion of minute by minute, ever fluctuating social relevance and likability. Getting canceled on the internet and nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine.

I know I sound like a consummate optimist, but I’m really not. I lose perspective all the time. Sometimes everything just feels completely pointless. I know the pressure of living your life through the lens of perfectionism. And I know that I’m talking to a group of perfectionists because you are here today graduating from NYU. So this may be hard for you to hear: In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong person, under-react, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it, overthink, not think at all, self sabotage, create a reality where only your experience exists, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others, deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time, rinse, repeat. And I’m not gonna lie, these mistakes will cause you to lose things.

I’m trying to tell you that losing things doesn’t just mean losing. A lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things too.

Now you leave the structure and framework of school and chart your own path. Every choice you make leads to the next choice which leads to the next, and I know it’s hard to know, which path to take. There will be times in life where you need to stand up for yourself. Times when the right thing is actually to back down and apologize. Times when the right thing is to fight, times when the right thing is to turn and run. Times to hold on with all you have and times to let go with grace. Sometimes the right thing to do is to throw out the old schools of thought in the name of progress and reform. Sometimes the right thing to do is to sit and listen to the wisdom of those who have come before us. How will you know what the right choice is in these crucial moments? You won’t.

How do I give advice to this many people about their life choices? I won’t.

The scary news is: You’re on your own now.

But the Cool news is: You’re on your own now!

I leave you with this: We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams. And you will screw it up sometimes. So will I. And when I do, you will most likely read about it on the internet. Anyway, hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it.

As long as we are fortunate enough to be breathing, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out. And I’m a doctor now, so I know how breathing works.

I hope you know how proud I am to share this day with you. We’re doing this together. So let’s just keep dancing like we’re…

… the class of ’22.

© Taylor Swift. (2022)

Doctor of Fine Arts

(Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Producer, and Director)

@taylorswift @taylornation

[nathalycarv]

“Hi, I’m Taylor.

Last time I was in a stadium this size, I was dancing in heels and wearing a glittery leotard. This outfit is much more comfortable. 

I’d like to say a huge thank you to NYU‘s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bill Berkeley and all the trustees and members of the board, NYU’s President Andrew Hamilton, Provost Katherine Fleming, and the faculty and alumni here today who have made this day possible. I feel so proud to share this day with my fellow honorees Susan Hockfield and Felix Matos Rodriguez, who humble me with the ways they improve our world with their work. As for me, I’m…90% sure the main reason I’m here is because I have a song called ‘22’. And let me just say, I am elated to be here with you today as we celebrate and graduate New York University’s Class of 2022.

Not a single one of us here today has done it alone. We are each a patchwork quilt of those who have loved us, those who have believed in our futures, those who showed us empathy and kindness or told us the truth even when it wasn’t easy to hear. Those who told us we could do it when there was absolutely no proof of that. Someone read stories to you and taught you to dream and offered up some moral code of right and wrong for you to try and live by. Someone tried their best to explain every concept in this insanely complex world to the child that was you, as you asked a bazillion questions like, ‘how does the moon work’ and ‘why can we eat salad but not grass.’ And maybe they didn’t do it perfectly. No one ever can. Maybe they aren’t with us anymore, and in that case I hope you’ll remember them today. If they are here in this stadium, I hope you’ll find your own way to express your gratitude for all the steps and missteps that have led us to this common destination. 

I know that words are supposed to be my “thing,” but I will never be able to find the words to thank my mom and my dad, and my brother, Austin, for the sacrifices they made every day so that I could go from singing in coffee houses to standing up here with you all today because no words would ever be enough. To all the incredible parents, family members, mentors, teachers, allies, friends and loved ones here today who have supported these students in their pursuit of educational enrichment, let me say to you now: Welcome to New York. It’s been waiting for you. 

I’d like to thank NYU for making me technically, on paper at least, a doctor. Not the type of doctor you would want around in the case of an emergency, unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic bridge section. Or if your emergency was that you needed a person who can name over 50 breeds of cats in one minute.

I never got to have the normal college experience, per se. I went to public high school until tenth grade and finished my education doing homeschool work on the floors of airport terminals. Then I went out on the road on a radio tour, which sounds incredibly glamorous but in reality it consisted of a rental car, motels, and my mom and I pretending to have loud mother-daughter fights with each other during boarding so no one would want the empty seat between us on Southwest. 

As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college, imagining the posters I’d hang on the wall of my freshmen dorm. I even set the ending of my music video for my song “Love Story” at my fantasy imaginary college, where I meet a male model reading a book on the grass and with one single glance, we realize we had been in love in our past lives. Which is exactly what you guys all experienced at some point in the last four years, right?

But I really can’t complain about not having a normal college experience to you because you went to NYU during a global pandemic, being essentially locked into your dorms or having to do classes over Zoom. Everyone in college during normal times stresses about test scores, but on top of that you also had to pass like 1,000 COVID tests. I imagine the idea of a normal college experience was all you wanted too. But in this case, you and I both learned that you don’t always get all the things in the bag that you selected from the menu in the delivery service that is life. You get what you get. And as I would like to say to you, you should be very proud of what you’ve done with it. Today, you leave New York University and then you go out into the world searching for what’s next.  And so will I.

So as a rule, I try not to give anyone unsolicited advice unless they ask for it. I’ll go into this more later. I guess I have been officially solicited in this situation, to impart whatever wisdom I might have and tell you the things that helped me in my life so far. Please bear in mind that I, in no way, feel qualified to tell you what to do. You’ve worked and struggled and sacrificed and studied and dreamed your way here today and so, you know what you’re doing. You’ll do things differently than I did them and for different reasons. 

So I won’t tell you what to do because no one likes that. I will, however, give you some life hacks I wish I knew when I was starting out my dreams of a career, and navigating life, love, pressure, choices, shame, hope and friendship.

The first of which is…life can be heavy, especially if you try to carry it all at once. Part of growing up and moving into new chapters of your life is about catch and release. What I mean by that is, knowing what things to keep, and what things to release. You can’t carry all things, all grudges, all updates on your ex, all enviable promotions your school bully got at the hedge fund his uncle started. Decide what is yours to hold and let the rest go. Oftentimes the good things in your life are lighter anyway, so there’s more room for them. One toxic relationship can outweigh so many wonderful, simple joys. You get to pick what your life has time and room for. Be discerning.

Secondly, learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. Cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime. Even the term “cringe” might someday be deemed “cringe.”

I promise you, you’re probably doing or wearing something right now that you will look back on later and find revolting and hilarious. You can’t avoid it, so don’t try to. For example, I had a phase where, for the entirety of 2012, I dressed like a 1950s housewife. But you know what? I was having fun. Trends and phases are fun. Looking back and laughing is fun. 

And while we’re talking about things that make us squirm but really shouldn’t, I’d like to say that I’m a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things. It seems to me that there is a false stigma around eagerness in our culture of “unbothered ambivalence.” This outlook perpetuates the idea that it’s not cool to “want it.” That people who don’t try hard are fundamentally more chic than people who do. And I wouldn’t know because I have been a lot of things but I’ve never been an expert on “chic.” But I’m the one who’s up here so you have to listen to me when I say this: Never be ashamed of trying. Effortlessness is a myth. The people who wanted it the least were the ones I wanted to date and be friends with in high school. The people who want it most are the people I now hire to work for my company. 

I started writing songs when I was 12 and since then, it’s been the compass guiding my life, and in turn, my life guided my writing. Everything I do is just an extension of my writing, whether it’s directing videos or a short film, creating the visuals for a tour, or standing on stage performing. Everything is connected by my love of the craft, the thrill of working through ideas and narrowing them down and polishing it all up in the end. Editing. Waking up in the middle of the night and throwing out the old idea because you just thought of a newer, better one. A plot device that ties the whole thing together. There’s a reason they call it a hook. Sometimes a string of words just ensnares me and I can’t focus on anything until it’s been recorded or written down. 

As a songwriter, I’ve never been able to sit still, or stay in one creative place for too long. I’ve made and released 11 albums and in the process, I’ve switched genres from country to pop to alternative to folk. This might sound like a very songwriter-centric line of discussion but in a way, I really do think we are all writers. And most of us write in a different voice for different situations. You write differently in your Instagram stories than you do your senior thesis. You send a different type of email to your boss than you do your best friend from home.

We are all literary chameleons and I think it’s fascinating. It’s just a continuation of the idea that we are so many things, all the time. And I know it can be really overwhelming figuring out who to be, and when. Who you are now and how to act in order to get where you want to go. I have some good news: it’s totally up to you. I also have some terrifying news: it’s totally up to you.

I said to you earlier that I don’t ever offer advice unless someone asks me for it, and now I’ll tell you why: As a person who started my very public career at the age of 15, it came with a price. And that price was years of unsolicited advice. Being the youngest person in every room for over a decade meant that I was constantly being issued warnings from older members of the music industry, the media, interviewers, executives. This advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings. See, I was a teenager in the public eye at a time when our society was absolutely obsessed with the idea of having perfect young female role models. It felt like every interview I did included slight barbs by the interviewer about me one day “running off the rails.”

That meant a different thing to everyone person said it me. So I became a young adult while being fed the message that if I didn’t make any mistakes, all the children of America would grow up to be perfect angels. However, if I did slip up, the entire earth would fall off its axis and it would be entirely my fault and I would go to pop star jail forever and ever. It was all centered around the idea that mistakes equal failure and ultimately, the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life. 

This has not been my experience. My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life. 

And being embarrassed when you mess up is part of the human experience. Getting back up, dusting yourself off and seeing who still wants to hang out with you afterward and laugh about it? That’s a gift.

The times I was told no or wasn’t included, wasn’t chosen, didn’t win, didn’t make the cut…looking back, it really feels like those moments were as important, if not more crucial, than the moments I was told “yes.”

Not being invited to the parties and sleepovers in my hometown made me feel hopelessly lonely, but because I felt alone, I would sit in my room and write the songs that would get me a ticket somewhere else. Having label executives in Nashville tell me that only 35-year-old housewives listen to country music and there was no place for a 13-year-old on their roster made me cry in the car on the way home.

But then I’d post my songs on my MySpace — yes, MySpace — and would message with other teenagers like me who loved country music, but just didn’t have anyone singing from their perspective. Having journalists write in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive me to be made me feel like I was living in some weird simulation, but it also made me look inward to learn about who I actually am. Having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game was not a great way to date in my teens and twenties, but it taught me to protect my private life fiercely. Being publicly humiliated over and over again at a young age was excruciatingly painful but it forced me to devalue the ridiculous notion of minute by minute, ever-fluctuating social relevance and likability. Getting canceled on the internet and nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine. 

I know I sound like a consummate optimist, but I’m really not. I lose perspective all the time. Sometimes everything just feels completely pointless. I know the pressure of living your life through the lens of perfectionism. And I know that I’m talking to a group of perfectionists because you are here today graduating from NYU. And so this may be hard for you to hear: In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong people, under-react, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it, overthink, not think at all, self-sabotage, create a reality where only your experience exists, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others, deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time, rinse, repeat.  And I’m not gonna lie, these mistakes will cause you to lose things.

I’m trying to tell you that losing things doesn’t just mean losing. A lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things too. 

Now you leave the structure and framework of school and chart your own path. Every choice you make leads to the next choice which leads to the next, and I know it’s hard to know sometimes which path to take. There will be times in life when you need to stand up for yourself. Times when the right thing is to back down and apologize. Times when the right thing is to fight, times when the right thing is to turn and run. Times to hold on with all you have and times to let go with grace. Sometimes the right thing to do is to throw out the old schools of thought in the name of progress and reform. Sometimes the right thing to do is to listen to the wisdom of those who have come before us. How will you know what the right choice is in these crucial moments? You won’t.

How do I give advice to this many people about their life choices? I won’t.

Scary news is: you’re on your own now.

Cool news is: You’re on your own now.

I leave you with this: We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams. And you will screw it up sometimes. So will I. And when I do, you will most likely read about on the internet. Anyway…hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it. 

As long as we are fortunate enough to be breathing, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out. And I’m a doctor now, so I know how breathing works. 

I hope you know how proud I am to share this day with you. We’re doing this together. So let’s just keep dancing like we’re… The class of 22.”

- Taylor Swift

@taylorswift

[ganymedesclock]

Honestly? I think one of the biggest appeals to me about Hollow Knight is despite being a breathtakingly bleak setting, there’s never the sense that hope or kindness are pointless things. 

All three of the Nailmasters ultimately imply this, in different ways.

Oro, who is the most focused on strength, seemingly, has found it irritating and tiring. He’s the one who’s a potential flower recipient, which he insists he won’t do anything with, but puts it in a vase once you’re gone. Kindness moves him more than he insists it does. And some of that may be the subtle implication when you first meet Sly- that Sly may have been hardest on Oro considering in the dream Sly calls him an “oaf” who uses his nail clumsily.

And this is heavily influenced by the Godhome fight against the brothers- Oro tries to face you alone and fails. Mato comes in to back him up not because he’s called, but of his own accord.

Mato, who, according to Sheo, is distinguished not by his skill or strength but by his compassion and earnest love for others, which is definitely a quality he backs up with how kindly he takes to Ghost. And in practice, that second half of the fight is pretty darn tough- but it distinguishes that Mato doesn’t fight for glory or strength, but for his peers, and this proves how powerful he is.

And Sheo himself- the strongest of the three brothers, is literally shown to have gotten more competent and powerful because of laying down his nail and finding something else that he loved. Sheo, the one who, if you play your cards right, falls in love and ends up quite possibly one of the happiest people in the game, and who makes it clear to Ghost that if they’re ever themselves directionless or lonely, he’d love to take them in and help them find a new calling.

Even if the Hunter speaks very harshly about Ogrim, the story makes it clear that not only is the greater thematic implications in Ogrim’s favor, but that Ghost themselves respects him deeply- the description of the White Defender calls him “gallant”, and much narrative emphasis is given on Ogrim gaining respect for Ghost.

And Ogrim, Mato, and Sheo all cover this interesting theme from Ghost’s perspective- as a child who in many ways is raging against their father from the start of the game whether or not we as a player know it, who’s following echoes of the Pale King’s voice on the tablets in the King’s Pass and whose first major, essential action is to respond to the King’s insistence to “obey our laws” is to tear the door down with their nail- Ghost looks for father figures.

Ghost looks specifically for father figures who are kind, who are reassuring. Their experience in Hallownest, and our experience through their eyes, is divided- in one sense, there’s a great deal of fighting, of danger, of tension, and in another, there’s so many interesting, complex people with stories and lives and things they’re doing.

[architectnews]

HEMAA completes pair of stone houses for two brothers in Mexico City

Architecture studio HEMAA has completed two homes in the Jardines del Pedregal neighbourhood of Mexico City that share a lush garden at the front of the property.

Completed earlier this year, the pair of similar homes each have four bedrooms and five bathrooms. They are located on a steep site in the upscale Jardines del Pedregal area of Mexico City that was originally designed by Luis Barragán in the 1940s.

HEMAA clad the houses in grey stone

The area is named after the rocky landscape that characterises its building lots. It is sited atop a lava field, a feature that Barragán sought to emphasise in his original design for the area.

"He had a vision of a modernist residential development where the architecture would establish a clear dialogue in harmony with the natural landscape and the dramatic volcanic formations among other ideals," explained HEMAA.

Lush plants line the front of the properties. The photo is by Rafael Gamo

Upon entering from the front gate, visitors find themselves in a verdant shared garden that fronts the two houses.

Because of the site's pronounced elevation change, the home's main level is up a flight of exterior stairs that leads to a full-width terrace fronting each house.

Visitors enter by front staircases

"Access to the house is guided by a staircase that highlights the character of the main door and is surrounded by flower boxes and plants on the facades," said HEMAA.

"One of the main challenges was adapting a vast programme for two big families whilst integrating the architecture to the natural topography and blending in with the landscape."

The living area opens onto an outdoor terrace

HEMAA laid out the communal areas on the homes' ground levels, which include a dine-in kitchen as well as a formal dining room and exterior terraces.

The living and dining areas each open onto a rear yard, which is separated in two by a stone wall to provide each family with a more private outdoor space.

Read:

Robert Hutchison Architecture creates Chapel for Luis Barragán on roof of Mexican architect's home

Upstairs are the homes' bedrooms, as well as a media room that provides a more informal place for family gatherings. Finally, each home has a rooftop terrace, which the architects say was "specifically dedicated to viewing the complex".

Both homes' spacious interiors were finished in a restrained palette that features oak floors, built-in shelving, and doors.

Built-in shelving features in the interiors

The stone blocks that were used on the exterior facade are Cantera Gris de los Remedios, from a local quarry in Hidalgo, roughly 100 kilometres from Mexico City.

A diagonal scoring pattern gives the material a grain that differs from the stone's horizontal and vertical joint lines.

"This polished and elegant artisan work gives the facade a unique identity that, through the use of locally sourced materials, refers once again to the best of the architecture of the modernist movement in Pedregal," said HEMAA.

HEMAA was founded in 2011 and is led by Alejandra Tornel, José Miguel Fainsod and Santiago Hernández Matos. They have also completed the renovation of a house by modernist Mexican architect Augusto H Álvarez informed by the original architect's drawings.

Other residences in the Jardines del Pedregal neighbourhood include an all-black home by PPAA and a concrete home from the 1970s that was refurbished by Viga Arquitectos to brighten and modernise the interiors while retaining the original design's main features.

The photography is by César Béjar, unless otherwise indicated. 

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