Listen. My mom has a phrase for this: mahal kaayo ang iyang pahiyom.
Roughly translated, it means “her smiles are very expensive.”
See, Juls has had a hard life. In Texas, she lived below the poverty line, in a trailer park. Her dad was a deadbeat who never really treated her like his daughter – and it got worse when he turned out to be a hitman, which she only discovered before he was arrested and sentenced to death for murder. In the last month she’s been shot at, attacked, threatened with rape by Alacran and forced to flee to Mexico to hide for who knows how long.
She doesn’t trust or like most people, because they have shown her the worst that humanity has to offer. She’s hard because she’s had to be, because people have always looked down on her, because she’s always been told by everyone, except maybe Lupe, that she isn’t good enough. She didn’t even begin to dream about becoming a fashion designer until she met Val; Lupe had to convince just to aim for going to school instead of working. That kind of oppressive thought weighs down a person, and if you are to have any hope, you have to have your guard up.
But Juls as a person? She is kind, generous, and loving in a way that, if you can get her to trust you, is effortless and giving. Lupe is the only one we have ever seen her smile for, encouragingly and happily because that’s actually the kind of person Juls is. Her joy is so hard earned, that she gifts smiles to the people she loves when they are feeling down. But given her life? Juls really has to dig deep to find something to be happy about, so it costs a lot to get her to really smile, the kind of smile that shines in your eyes.
Her smiles are expensive because her happiness is so rare.
Until she meets Val.
And it’s like she lights up the freaking ROOM, because it’s so easy with Val. It is easy to trust Valentina because she’s so open with her feelings, there isn’t a lying, malicious bone in her body. Juls can afford to be soft and tender around her, mostly because when they first met, Val was the one who already was so vulnerable and sad. And Juls couldn’t bear to see that because she’s a kind person, so she lowered her walls and let her joy out, just to so Valentina could match her smile. It’s par the course with her M.O. to use her own joy to lighten others’ spirits.
But then, Val opened up to her and suddenly, someone else was making her smile.
A LOT.
EFFORTLESSLY
INCANDESCENTLY.
And so she gives her smiles freely. Generosity begets generosity. Val is so generous with her love, that tenderness just pours out of Juls as a result, without her consent. She couldn’t help it if she tried. (To be fair, she doesn’t try very hard at all).
And for Valentina? All she has ever known is a soft and open Juls, who looks at her with warm, kind eyes. Who only gets hard and angry when she’s hurt or scared. A sad and hard Juls is abnormal to her. She associates warmth and tenderness with Juls so much, she can’t even fathom the idea of her beloved Chivis not loving and cherishing Juls the way she does. Because Juls is only ever soft around her. Because just being around Valentina makes Juls feel safe. Settled. Secure.
These kids are the softest OTP I have ever seen. All they want is to eat their breakfast in peace and make out. They are the sane, soft, healthy, giving core of this INSANE telenovela, and they are just better together.
(In fact the show’s plot depends on it, since they function as the lynchpin/bridge of the entire damn show. There’s a reason why the plot lives and dies on their together status: they’re the only ones who have met players and influenced all seven major storylines. Between the two of them, they have all the pieces to break the premise of the show, and they have for a while now. But, another post for another time).
Okay so first up, Spanish has different words for the verb, to love. There’s me gusta, te quiero, me encantas, te amo. And caveat: there are variations in Spanish speaking cultures on what the usage of those words is. Mexican culture is gonna differ slightly than Spanish culture which is gonna differ from Venezuelan culture and Argentinian etc. That said, here goes:
In the context of dating and romantic love, people often go through progressions of love, right? So that is why you’ll see people transition through me gusta, te quiero, and te amo.
Or as I like to classify it:
me gusta: girl friend / boy friend (two words)
te quiero: “girlfriend” / “boyfriend” (one word, quotation marks)
te amo:GIRLFRIEND / BOYFRIEND.
Me gusta – that is “I like.” I like oranges, or yeah, that person is dope, I like her. Me gusta punk rock as the song goes etc. Nothing romantic ever.
Te amo: only means “I love you” in the romantic way. You really only reserve it for your significant other, when you are in a real committed relationship for a while. You know how saying “I love you” for the first time in a relationship is a big deal? Spanish allows you to express that meaning very clearly with te amo.
Te quiero – is the in-between stage of like and love. Quiero literally means “I want.” Yo quiero taco bell- I want taco bell. But, when used with pronouns and people, it means “I want you,” “I care for you,” “I love you” “I really like you.”
It can get really, really tricky, because it is a big catch all. The variation of usage ranges from “I love my dog” or “I love my friends” to “I love my child or parents”; however especially when paired with “mucho,” it can also mean “I care very deeply about you in a romantic way.”
So you really have to determine meaning through tone and context. Even before breaking the heteronormativity case that Val and Juls are operating under and introducing the “hey, you might like girls” layer, the vocabulary is already complicated just to distinguish “like” vs “like like.”
On top of all of that, Valentina is someone who has never been in love, doesn’t believe in romantic love, BUT she is also in canon, the character with the biggest heart and most universally beloved.
So what you’ve got is someone who throws herself into her feelings, has a lot of them, and feels DEEPLY, but is a complete bambi when it comes understanding how to differentiate friend love vs romantic love, how to articulate her feelings properly. It’s the reason why I refer to her as Unintentional Dreamboat, because she says these THINGS that are so genuinely romantic without realizing just how romantic they are.
