I do! I actually do vividly remember, probably in far more detail than you care to know, when I tried it for the first time–both times. Yepppp. Twice! The first time I got an ask about it, I did actually try it and at the time, it was just the not great wlext subs and it was of course the opening scene where Juls and Lupe walked past Val and Lucho arguing and I was like, hmm, maybe not.
It was a couple of WEEKS later that I tried again and I remember that day perfectly. It was at the very end of December, when a bunch of holidays string together and work is slow because so many people are out. And around this time every year, I binge through something I’ve been saving. In previous years it’d been Heartless and then Crownies + Janet King (the first season) and then Los Vecinos en Guerra. It’d just become something of a tradition to watch these very canon very satisfying f/f stories during that break.
This year, since New Year’s fell on a Tuesday, we didn’t get Monday off. So I was sitting there the Sunday before, trying to find something to do that wouldn’t take that long and then got the second ask about trying Juliantina and was like you know what, this actually could be perfect. I started the clips again, still wlext, though i would discover some hours later that zeroty had started their subbing, but by that point I’d already passed what they’d done.
I had no idea what those two were going to mean to me. I hadn’t seen any gifs, at the time it hadn’t really caught on in SM so I went in completely blind and god, how they gripped me! I was swept AWAY by the chemistry, by how natural their dynamic was, how romantic the slow burn ended up being. I remember wanting to gif so many things, millions of tiny little things as well as all the epic moments, but I just kept on watching. And then it was Monday and the show was back on again. I still would have started giffing from the beginning, but it was the Monday of the 41st ep, which as you might remember, hit a pretty significant milestone in their relationship.
Obviously I didn’t understand the dialogue, but immediately I knew the significance of them returning to the pool. You don’t do thematic callbacks for no reason. And then they stopped floating and stood up again, laughing and I was just soooo….aahhhhhhh.
Do you remember how long the buildup for that kiss was? How the laughter slowly drained away?
How Juls pulled back?
And it just went on forever
and ever! I didn’t even know if it’d happen or not, what with censorship at all. Would they get interrupted again?
Nope! This happened.
I wish I’d started watching earlier so I could have enjoyed the slow burn live, but I can’t help but love that was my intro to live viewing. Could you imagine not knowing this was coming?
Man, that show took over my life. You’re absolutely right, anon, we used to actually look forward to Mondays. Eesh! And the fandom energy! Whan experience it was.
The kind of blog I am now, this is far more representative of how I usually am, flitting from one show to the next, with perhaps Harlots, Killjoys, The Expanse, Killing Eve, and at one time, Corrie, The Rich Man’s Daughter, and, lol, The Mentalist, being the few exceptions. But Juliantina was in a class of its own. And I know it feels right now as if I’ve moved on, and I definitely don’t want to let down the people who’re still heavily invested and who send me asks and would still like gifs, I just…tend to focus on the most recent thing. With the most genuine of intentions, I’ll sit down to do something for Juliantina and wind up doing something else completely. At this point, I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep, but I really, really do hope to get through as many of the Juliantina asks and gifsets as I can, alternating them with newer media. So bear with me on that, guys. 🙂