Wilfredo and his ex-boyfriend Julio. “I’ve been wanting to ask out the prettiest teacher on campus. You think I’ve got a shot?”

Wil grunted and took another puff.

Bruno decided to take that as an invitation to take a seat beside him on the steps.

Wil simply continued to stare up at the sky. Smoking slowly. He didn’t look angry anymore, just tired. Bruno kicked off his shoes and removed his socks. The cool night air felt better on his bare feet and his toes could now fidget freely. Wil didn’t seem to mind, or if he did he didn’t say anything.

For a while, they just sat there in a surprisingly comfortable silence. It gave Bruno time to collect his thoughts. No longer racing, desperate, and panicked. He could think clearly. He could see why Wil had been so upset. He knew now why he’d been acting so strange. It really wasn’t his doing. At least not entirely. Not even mostly.

Wil looked so exhausted. So drained.

It wasn’t Bruno’s fault.

His life was a struggle in ways Bruno didn’t properly understand and could barely relate to. Bruno didn’t know what it was like to travel, to wander. To always be scrambling for purchase. For a safe place to rest his feet. Wil made it look easy. He was starting to realize that it probably wasn’t.

Bruno’s life hadn’t been easy, but despite all his fear, he always had a home. He belonged somewhere, even if he wasn’t always wanted.

Wil was charismatic and charming. He was well-liked and skilled. He was valued, and yet, he belonged nowhere.

Bruno dug his toes into the loamy soil. He watched as Wil’s cigar continued to shrink. Occasionally he’d look up at the stars, try to guess what Wil was thinking. He imagined he was tracing the constellations with his eyes. That seemed like something he would do. If he felt so inclined he would have told him stories about them, told him their different names in different cultures. He’d fashion some obscure story into playful teasing. None of that happened though.

Surprisingly Bruno was ok with that.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/36744685/chapters/98218794

Wilfredo choked back the urge to cry. He felt so weak and useless and wicked. He wanted so desperately to comfort his lover. To take that pain away, but he didn't know how, didn't know if that was something he could do. He did the only thing he could think to. He brought Bruno’s lips to his and felt fresh hot tears stream down his beloved's face as he kissed him. Bruno’s face felt so warm in his hands. Shielded from prying eyes for the moment they held each other, in their dim lonely corner of the city.

Finally, chapter 16 is out! https://archiveofourown.org/works/36744685/chapters/104019066

Thank you dearly ^.^ to answer the first question I'm not taking general requests if you want me to draw one of your OC's or something unrelated to my stories then you'll have to pay. (Though commissions are usually open.) But if you have a request for something TLAA related you'd like to see do feel free to make a request in the asks ^.^ The latest post was all little TLAA things people wanted to see.

As for voice claims I've been asked this one before both on here and on my discord. I hadn't answered yet cause I didn't really have any. (Though there was a chat in the discord where people kept suggesting British actors for Wilfredo XD my boy is from Bogotá why does he sound British to people?) That said I would love to make an audio drama out of TLAA eventually which would mean holding auditions for VA's so if that ever gets off the ground we'll get voices for them. (Points for mentioning Diego btw and using his first name ^.^)

If I were to make this audio drama I'd like the VA's to all speak Spanish fluently or at least competently. When I'm writing TLAA I'm operating on the logic that everyone is speaking Spanish and the dialogue is just being translated for the audience. This actually gets more obvious a bit later with a book of Wil's that Bruno can't read because it's in English and it's established that Bruno doesn't speak much English if any. (The Encanto's been isolated since 1900 so it's very likely few of the original settlers would have spoken much English)

I think it would be really fun to have it all storyboarded with the narration read allowed by the pov character in English while all the dialogue is performed in Spanish with subtitles. But that might be going a bit far with it and just be me being overly artsy. It would work just as well to settle for the Spanglish dialogue it currently has which is much less literal and not go through the headache of drawing everything. Just making it something you can pop on in the background to listen to.

If anyone would like to try and take a crack at voicing one of these characters go ahead and pick some dialogue from TLAA to read and send me the recording I'd love to hear it ^.^ you can post it here to tumblr or send it to me on discord. Link to the TLAA discord below.

So these are just a few miscellaneous requests I’ve gotten lately. Some gender swapped Bruna Wilfreda (she goes by Freda for short) Some kissing art and Jac in contemporary clothes. On a side gender swapping TLAA would require a lot of small changes to the story as TLAA examines sexuality and gender pretty heavily and changing Wil and Jac to a lesbian and a womanizing man respectively would come with a lot of interesting implications. 

I know it’s been a while since I posted art. Been busy and sick but I’ve got stuff I’m working on. In the meantime enjoy a pair of Abuelos laughing at their nietos.

So I figured Wil would probably dress differently when he’s hanging out at gay bars and such so here’s his “eveningwear” a far cry from his usual look. Wonder if Bruno will like it -3-

I wanted to draw Jacqueline’s tramp stamp. Honestly I love the audacity of this tattoo >////<

I am a fan. As for Wil interacting with them here's a concept for you. It's 1940. Wil is currently broke, homeless, and between jobs. This is right on the heels of Julio's betrayal and he hasn't yet pulled his life back together.

I'll let people speculate for now where they think this would go.

Ok so I looked this one up to give it a read when you asked. I haven't finished it but I feel like I'm at a point where I can give my thoughts and... Well...

The writing starts out kind of crude, with the story not really being shown much. It feels a bit more like a synopsis of events in the beginning. This problem is corrected over time but I felt like mentioning it. This issue though of "show, don't tell" continues to be a bit of a problem with the story giving us these long-winded rambles about characters rather than just having them do things on screen to show their personalities and roles in the world.

Given how tied the orginal movie is to real Colombian history I'm not sure how comfortable I really am with them basically just creating their own fantasy setting and making up whatever world-building they want. Columbia does have a complicated and violent history but none of the actually violent things that were going on at the time are present. It's all just stuff the writer created. Even just accepting that they turned Colombia into a purely fictional setting it often feels like the world doesn't really exist outside of the conflict. The antagonist also falls into that camp of people so awful it becomes kind of impossible that they wouldn't eventually just get taken out by their own men. Real violent dictators still rely on a degree of charisma and manipulation and often ideology of which this villain seems to have non.

The idea of Pedro being alive but having been disfigured and becoming a very different person as he was hardened by the world is not a terrible concept necessarily but it has no real weight. Pedro is still such an unambiguously kind and loving person despite his appearance that the concept doesn't really stick. To make matters worse Julieta's food is able to heal all his scars and disfigurements even regrowing an arm. So his transformation really, really, has no weight.

This is the point where I stopped reading. It actually made me really uncomfortable that Pedro would just be robbed of this part of himself without his consent. This is his body and he's lived with this body longer than he was even alive as an able-bodied person. I find the assumption that he would just be happier this way a bit gross and offensive. That Pedro needs to be fixed, rather than loved and valued as the man he is, scars and all. This also means Bruno's blindness is very, very, unlikely to stick long-term. It makes all the suffering feel gratuitous and like it doesn't really have a point to make. For every small thing I've liked there's so many things that I just found offputting to don't sit right with me.

So overall I'm gonna give this fic a resounding... meh? There are some fun ideas here but there are done so clumsily and it feels like nothing really matters in the long term.

So this is a minor spoiler I suppose but I had this image pop into my brain and just had to draw it. This is Wil, he is 15 here, this is his dad, he is abusive. I feel like this comic says it all really. The calm collected way his father reacts to the whole thing, like he didn't just bludgeon a child. The way he still expects him to look him in the eye, adress him formally, stand up straight, it all just adds insult to injury. Whatever Wilfredo said there is no way he deserves this. Wil is also just... distressingly used to these kinds of punishments.

So someone in my discord suggested Bruno stealing Wil’s shirts and I was like “AWW that would be adorable!” But uh.... My brain went somewhere else. Wil’s shirts are a damn tent on him, really drives home how small Bruno is.

It was mentioned briefly that Bruno can make his eyes flash without triggering a full vision, a cute little parlor trick. Like to think he uses this to mess with Wil sometimes. I’m sure I’ll draw some of the smut scenes soon enough. If you didn’t know there’s a collection of nsfw sort stories posted in a separate fic on ao3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/37448599/chapters/93456067 for anyone who’s interested.

So Bruno and Wil flirting from chapter 5 Champion https://archiveofourown.org/works/36744685/chapters/93952654

A scene from chapter 7 Presage 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/36744685/chapters/94984744

This chapter is a bit clunky over all but this moment in particular is pretty interesting for a few reasons. For one Bruno is much better at evaluating other people than himself. He tends to constantly take responsibility for things that aren’t his fault, but is much more mature and rational when evaluating a situation from an outside perspective. One thing Wilfredo and Bruno have in common is they are both hard on themselves, just in different ways. It’s also the first time Bruno really sees Wil break down, the first real off mask moment between the two of them.