#and it's an interesting trend if you really think about it

[unsuperingyournatural]

saving it for the reps

Pedro Pascal x Actress!Reader

masterlist

The second Pedro pulls into the lot, you both see it.

A small crowd clustered near the front entrance. A couple of TMZ vultures, a few overzealous fans with glossy photos already in hand, and the unmistakable glint of camera lenses trying to look casual behind tinted sunglasses. One guy’s even pacing like he’s rehearsing his lines.

Pedro puts the car in park and sighs quietly through his nose.

You glance at him. “Want to come back later?”

He shakes his head, resting his wrist casually on the steering wheel. “Nah. We’re already here. Let’s just get in, get our reps, and pretend this isn’t weird.”

You smile faintly. “You pretending things aren’t weird is one of my favorite things about you.”

He grins, quick and crooked. “I’m a pro at selective delusion.”

You both step out, and the moment your doors close, the energy shifts. Voices pick up. A few phones rise. One TMZ guy immediately starts lobbing questions with a rehearsed brightness that doesn’t quite hide the bait underneath.

“Pedro, over here! What’s your max bench right now?” “Is it true your cardio routine is just running away from commitment?” “Who’s the spotter—her or you?”

Pedro chuckles, slipping on his sunglasses with one hand and adjusting his hoodie with the other. “I’ll leave the commitment talk for my therapist, thanks.”

The guy snorts. “So she is your girlfriend?”

You’re still a few feet from the doors when a teenage voice cuts through.

“Excuse me—can I get a picture with you two? Please?”

You both turn. It’s a kid. Maybe fifteen, holding out a phone, nervous but polite.

Pedro softens immediately. “Absolutely, man.”

You step closer, and Pedro crouches slightly to match the kid’s height, even though he doesn’t really need to. You smile for the shot, gentle hand on the fan’s shoulder, and hear the shutter go off three times.

“Thank you so much,” the boy says breathlessly. “You’re both awesome.”

Pedro bumps his fist, warm and sincere. “You’re awesome, hermano. Thanks for saying hi.”

As you straighten up, a couple of people nearby call out your name. One holds out a red carpet photo from a press event six months ago.

“You were unreal in Everest’s Edge. Will you sign this?”

You nod, a little surprised but grateful. “Sure.”

A few more follow—just one or two—but you recognize the shift. You’re not the star, not in the way Pedro is. But they know who you are. They care. And right now, they’re watching.

Pedro’s already signed a Mandalorian still and a napkin someone shoved at him. He makes a face at it, scribbles anyway. “Hope this doesn’t end up on eBay,” he jokes. “But if it does, tell me if it goes for anything good.”

You laugh under your breath, passing back a signed photo. Then, like clockwork, Pedro glances at you, the corners of his mouth pulling in that familiar, quiet cue.

“Alright,” he says gently to the crowd. “We’ve gotta head in—we’re on a time clock.”

He reaches for your hand as he says it, grounding, familiar, warm.

And that’s when it happens.

“Pedro,” the TMZ guy calls, just loud enough to cut through. “Are you two actually dating, or is this just another PR move to keep your name trending?”

It’s not even subtle.

Pedro stops walking, just for a second. His fingers tighten around yours—barely, but enough for you to feel it.

He turns his head, his sunglasses still on, but his smile now faint and unreadable.

“I’m flattered you think I’m organized enough to plan a PR move,” he says, voice calm, lightly amused. “But no. We’re not here to trend. We’re here to train. Appreciate the interest, though.”

The guy opens his mouth to push further, but Pedro’s already turning again, hand still clasped with yours.

The two of you walk into the gym without looking back.

Inside, once the door clicks shut behind you, Pedro exhales, dragging a hand down his face.

“That guy always asks the dumbest shit,” he mutters, half to himself.

You glance up at him. “You handled it like a champ.”

He shrugs one shoulder, a little sheepish. “Well… I mean, I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but I figured I’d save it for the deadlifts.”

You laugh, nudging his side. “Remind me to record that.”

Pedro gives you a tired little smile, softer now. “You good?”

You nod. “I just… I really admire how you do that.”

“What, smile through being emotionally harassed in public?”

“No,” you say, reaching for his hand again. “Handle people with grace. Even when they don’t deserve it.”

He looks at you for a moment, long enough for the world to fade back again. Then he lifts your hand to his lips and kisses it, right between your knuckles.

“Come on,” he says gently. “Let’s go sweat something out.”And you follow him in. Because whatever the world throws at you outside, in here, it’s just you and him again. One set at a time.

[wellnoe]

either we're past the height of this trend or i've just stopped paying attention but i have limited patience for youtubers who intentionally seek out 'bad' media to respond to or react to but don't have anything cleverer to say than "woah this is soooooo weird and stupid. um? this is so weird!!"

and this is not because i have a deep investment in the narratives they are describing, because most of the time i don't, but because something that is abundantly clear in watching a lot of these is that these works do have extremely consistent inner logics, and a lot of what is 'weird' or 'doesn't make sense' about them is, for example, the work following through on misogynistic logics that we don't usually see reproduced so openly in movies or books. or alternatively, a self-published novel really going for a very specific kink that maybe should affect how you think about covering the material. and neglecting (or refusing?) to see that as a viewer makes your entire response suspect to me! in the sense that like. i am not convinced that you (hypothetical youtuber) have actually put any work or thought into your responses beyond the kneejerk reaction. which is not interesting. and is shallow. and also i find it irritating on a personal level. do you have nothing to say?? are there no connections you can draw here???

[pankomako]

are there any indie animated sitcoms? i feel like all the indie cartoons ive seen have some sort of big plot, all action and drama, none that are purely episodic and low-stakes

[concerto-roblox]

it's been too many years for this to be relevant anymore but i'm STILL pissed off about heather by conan gray getting popular and the meaning being co-opted into "omg that girl is godly levels of beautiful and i'm just too ugly to compete" :( like. the song is about being gay. it is a song being sung by a man about how the person he likes will never like him back because that person likes women. the reason the singer says he's not as beautiful as heather is because he is not attractive to that person specifically because he's not a woman. are you stupid.

[interactivefictionramblings]

[Spoilers for Cain’s romance route.]

Never gonna get over how from Cain’s POV he got solidly rejected like (3) times only for Lane to with zero forewarning join him in his shower.

(Pomegranate scene, first aid scene, rooftop.)

It made full sense to me he reacted with shock.

[bloody-wonder]

why ambivalent? if u don't mind me asking, I know kevin is a fave of yours so I imagine that's nice?

(one book is a prequel to the og series and the other a book set after jeans final book I believe - in case u didn't know)

I'd guess the prequel shows a lot of kevjean (obvs) & ig the other book will likely be about his relationship with wymack? maybe becoming not an alcoholic? not sure tbh. maybe just more kevjean lol

well tbh after not liking tsc and tgr i'm pretty pessimistic about any potential new books in this series. generally speaking i think it's better to quit while you're ahead with any sort of creative project and in the case of aftg specifically i think nora made some bold but ultimately rewarding decisions in the og trilogy which she's now systematically undoing. one such decision was to end the story right after the final match - i mean they haven't even left the building so no wonder many people deem this ending quite abrupt but i think it works much better than if it had been drawn out to include extended falling action. another such decision was that, despite the fact that kevin seems like he should be the main character of this story, he isn't one - neil is. ik there have existed many drafts and neil didn't become the pov character until quite late in the writing process but i do believe this choice contributed crucially to the story's success. the mismatch between neil being the protagonist but the main villain (riko) being kevin's antagonist is the sort of experimental twist on storytelling structures i love selfpub books for. well now we do have extended falling action in the form of another trilogy and if you read my previous posts about it you know i think it brings nothing to the table. and now that we're going to get some books with kevin as a protag after all i struggle to imagine they might turn out any good either.

bc like,, what are they gonna be about? "kevin becomes not an alcoholic" does not a book make. besides, the way she's writing "jean becomes not brainwashed and traumatized" does not exactly inspire confidence. kevjean is a ship and a non canon one at that. not to sound like all those posts complaining about the tropification of literature but a ship alone does not a book make. the sequel needs a plot to weave kevin's relationships and character development into and idk if nora can (or indeed will want to) come up with one that works and isn't just ohhh nooo it's the mafia again. the prequel will likely end up rehashing a lot of material we're already familiar with - which i was totally fine with when it was done in short story format and later labeled as extra content. but when a good chunk of tsc turned out to be tkm scenes recycled from jean's pov it annoyed me a lot. i can't really pinpoint what the difference is but with the short stories it's really like you're getting these cool additional insights but with several books worth of that it starts feeling bloated like later mcu. is there something new to be said or are we just beating the dead horse?

so yeah kevin is indeed one of my faves and that's exactly the reason i'm concerned. i don't think he needs more books and i don't think he needs to be the main character (or even a pov character - he'll definitely lose a lot of his kevin day mystique if i'm constantly in his head). i really hope i will eat my own words tho bc i did like everything nora has written about the foxes recently so there's that

[beta-adjacent]

Omegaverse video games

[cloudbends]

as life would have it I started wonderful precure today! watched 4 episodes... thoughts in the tags as per usual, so far it feels very fun and fresh in a way I'm enjoying a lot

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

have decided that I will not be reducing people to their current life phase, relationship status, religious affiliation, age, or any other exterior trapping. you are a person. I care about you. that's basically it. this is how I'm going to see the world from now on.

[xcziel]

feeling nostalgic and watching utube reactors discover classic songs and then feeling both old and incredulous

[katyspersonal]

Cool.. Our rent price got raised. :') I did not know it was even possible to get even MORE poor than me and mom already were, but here we are. Guess I'll start surviving on literal bread and water at this rate.

[boss-the-goofball]

I swear I started to write out a meta post on Inko in fanfics because it's something that's been plaguing me since last night- but I can't figure out how to word it

[dashiellqvverty]

everyone always wants to talk about jenny nicholsons video essays and i’m like does ANYONE want to talk about the art of the mattress aka the sleep song. bc it plays in my head every time i see anything about her.

[orchidbreezefc]

this also reflects a difference in values! the boomers acknowledge the inconvenience of the action they're being thanked for and say the other is welcome to this inconvenience. meanwhile the millennial finds it more polite to assert that there was no inconvenience at all.

this is a lot of why younger folks are averse to phone calls, besides them being really scary. a phone call demands the other person put everything else down at a specific time and devote time to you. texts and emails can be responded to at one's leisure.

younger folks are more conscious of causing inconvenience to others and striving to respect their time. "no problem" sounds dismissive to a boomer's ears, disregarding the interaction as not a big deal rather than just accepting the dang gratitude. but it's actually intended as a reassurance: it wasn't a big deal to me, i didn't mind doing it for you. it's no bother, don't even worry about it.

Speaking of linguistics, there’s one particular linguistic tick that I think clearly separates Baby Boomers from Millennials: how we reply when someone says “thank you.”

You almost never hear a Millennial say “you’re welcome.” At least not when someone thanks them. It just isn’t done. Not because Millenials are ingrates lacking all manners, but because the polite response is “No problem.” Millennials only use “you’re welcome” sarcastically when they haven’t been thanked or when something has been taken from/done to them without their consent. It’s a phrase that’s used to point out someone else’s rudeness. A Millenial would typically be fairly uncomfortable saying “you’re welcome” as an acknowledgement of genuine thanks because the phrase is only ever used disengenuously.

Baby Boomers, however, get really miffed if someone says “no problem” in response to being thanked. From their perspective, saying “no problem” means that whatever they’re thanking someone for was in fact a problem, but the other person did it anyway as a personal favor. To them “You’re welcome” is the standard polite response.

“You’re welcome” means to Millennials what “no problem” means to Baby Boomers, and vice versa.The two phrases have converse meanings to the different age sets. I’m not sure exactly where this line gets drawn, but it’s somewhere in the middle of Gen X. This is a real pain in the ass if you work in customer service because everyone thinks that everyone else is being rude when they’re really being polite in their own language.

[amplexadversary]

I wonder if a really dedicated collection of book nerds could get those Elaine Duillo style cover illustrations a foothold in the publishing industry again. There are certainly enough artists who can achieve that level of intricacy that a really really popular Trend might be able to do it.

Perhaps any of those bookbinding hobbyists might want to try to go pro and pair up with an artist to refurbish something well enough to hook the really rich art snobs into buying unique, custom pieces for a fuckton of money.

[pickleking8]

Hey! I had a question for any non-USAmericans. If you guys didn't know, I'm from the US (though I did spend four years of my childhood in a different country), and the general narrative for children in the US is that America is a very powerful/influential country. I was thinking about this, and wondering how true it really is, because of course this is the narrative my own country told me. Are we really all that influential?

So, my question is, for any non-USAmericans, what's your perception of how powerful the US is? How much do the actions of the US or trends within the US really affect your lives? I'd appreciate any response!