hi !! im aster, but u can call me nelli if youd like :P my preferred pronouns are she / her (see my pronouns page for specifics). i support arsenal and the usmnt (unfortunately), and my favorite players are baggio, martinelli, reyna, and ganso
about this blog...
i realized there were no lamine yamal x dean huijsen (laminedean; my otp) fics on ao3 and was so shellshocked i booted up my unused tumblr blog and started posting
but anyways, i post mainly mens football rpf-related stuff + general shitposts !! i also write, and my masterlist can be found here. i obviously also watch the sport so i will rant abt the beautiful game occasionally
about interacting...
my dms r open !! even if im not following u back lmao idc. and ofc if ur a moot my dms AND my legs are spread 😻
if u dont like what i post, pls block me !! honestly ion like arguin w/ppl so like pls spare us both the headache and click off and/or block thanksssss
this is a small and very new blog, so all interactions are appreciated !! ill prolly follow back if i fw ur blog
about asks...
pls do click that ask button !! im not picky say wtvr u want. (obviously, be smart about what you say, and dont be a hater, and whatnot.) my replies may take between five minutes and five weeks so whoops
reqs are open as well. i am a heavy procrastinator tho... but fortunately also a people pleaser !! dm/send in an ask to motivate me to write faster fr (this applies to any of my fics btw)
anons: 🫀 ⭐ 🎈🫧
about tags...
note: im not retaggging the 300+ posts i made before this post. only like the relevant/longer ones maybe ? idk tho
#nellis wordvomit day-to-day shitposts (pls do not take seriously im heavily delusional)
#scraps from nellis floor snippets of fics i write. may or may not be in text post format
#nellivision any pics i take, which includes text posts, screenshots, anythin of the sort. irl will have poor blurring
#nellis incomprehensible rants for my long rants about topics ranging from ship discourse to footballers. they prolly dont make any sense but thats okay
#nelli picks up the phone literally js me answering asks. may range from whole ass hc pages to like a sentence
#nelli holds a gun to ur head my recs. songs, fics, the like. if i put it here i SERIOUSLY recommend it (im very picky) and my tumblr mutuals are actually obligated by law to check them out /j. ofc this is my opinion at the end of the dayyy
#nellis mailbox my submitted posts. submit wtvr u want make me giggle idc
#nellis other brainworms anything that does not fall under the below tags
#nellis football yaoi corner football rpf stuff
#nelli loves ball (derogatory) footy in general (excludes rpf)
and benny, kai, big gabi, richy (and others!!) should *** **** ***** ******* *** ** ***** ***** *** until he’s all **** and ****** **** ***** ***. it’d be a ****** ******* kinda situation. if that makes sense
neymessi.. in the big 26....? surely not...................
Later that night, Leo finds himself scrolling Neymar’s MySpace endlessly. The posts never seem to end, and before long Leo’s opened YouTube and is scrolling there, too, looking for Neymar’s highlights. He eventually clicks on a video called “NEYMAR skills & tricks 2011 new HD” and settles down to watch it.
This is one of Leo’s favorite pastimes, unfortunately, because it lets him pretend there’s something rational about what he’s doing. He tells himself it’s analysis, study, preparation in the same way he studies any player. Foot placement, timing, the way Neymar shifts his weight just slightly before committing to a direction, etc. It is all the same. However, there’s a difference he doesn’t fully admit, which is that he never watches anyone else like this. On the screen, Neymar cuts inside with that strange, effortless violence that doesn’t look like speed so much as refusal to be caught, and Leo finds himself tracking it, noticing how defenders hesitate for a fraction too long because they expect hesitation that never comes. He thinks, almost clinically at first, about how Neymar creates uncertainty rather than space, how he makes the pitch feel narrower just by existing in it, and yet the longer he watches, the more the analysis starts to blur into something less clean, less defensible.
Because there is a moment, somewhere between a feint and a stumble that isn’t a stumble at all, where Leo forgets to be objective. He watches Neymar glide past a man twice his size so easily it surely is nothing more than a change of mind, and something in Leo’s chest tightens with the uncomfortable familiarity of recognition rather than admiration. It feels less that he is watching a player and more that he is remembering something he was never supposed to see directly. That’s what it becomes in his mind without him meaning it to: a kind of sacred distance, where Neymar only exists safely in fragments, clips, replays, slowed-down angles, frozen frames, because in real time, in person, the scale of him becomes something harder to survive.
Leo lets the video play out in front of him. He notices how the camera almost always lags behind Neymar’s intent, how it only ever captures the aftermath of something that was decided a moment earlier in Neymar’s body, and he thinks, distantly, that this is probably the closest thing to witnessing divinity that someone like him is allowed. Not because Neymar is untouchable, not really, but because in person there is no buffer between intention and impact, no pause where Leo can hide inside understanding instead of reaction. So he becomes what he is now: a careful observer worshipping through repetition, relearning the shape of something he once stood too close to without realizing that proximity alone was never the same as safety...
[this is an excerpt of the soon-to-be chapter 6! read the first five chapters here]
hey nelli! what was the research process like for top1 wrt period-accuracy (saying that as if 2012 was the gilded age lowkey Hurts but I digress)? what helped you get a feel for the cultural (especially pertaining to Brazil) and technological landscape of the time? love love love the fic and was curious about this aspect of it. thank you in advance!
OMG SORRY TOOK A BIT TO REPLY i have been. Drowning in work
i am SO SO SO willing to answer this!!!!!
ok im gonna keep this brief but first, i did a LOT of research. as in. a LOT
luckily enough for me, even though this is set in 2012, it has a lot of stuff about the myspace era given well, the plot of the whole thing. so i would look at certain people from that era to see what they were up to
i, like many other gen z people, are OBSESSED with 2000s stuff, so it was really fun to see what it was like back then! i also found going on reddit, tumblr, etc. for older blogs from around that time really helped, because seeing old chats talking Like Dis xD really does help
looking at old memes is also really helpful!!! this reddit post from 2011 is something i reference occasionally because of how many comments there are and how it really describes the sense of humor and jokes from that era (even if it is reddit, which neither leo or ney were or will be on. it's still useful!)
i also found a lot of help in the scenemo community. i actually know this girl from church who is a pretty big scene creator on tiktok and have asked her a lot of stuff (and since she's chill about the fanfiction part, i can explicitly ask her what i want vs dancing around it and hoping someone accidentally answers what i want)
more specifically, the brazil part was something i struggled a lot with as someone who is not brazilian AT ALL. i wanted to keep the cultural accuracy as high as possible without diving too deep into stereotypes, and i did end up consulting a lot of brazilians for their feedback! which gets me into another point
ASK PEOPLE. the internet is a wild and wacky place but oddly enough asking strangers online for help is genuinely nice. i've asked r/millenials several questions (though. i pose my questions in a way thats more like "was thinking about this the other day and was wondering if yall could help me out" and less of a "im writing neymar and messi having slow hot drunk sex and want to keep it accurate please help me") and have gotten really helpful responses!! a dear family friend of mine is also the chillest millenial ever to exist probably and helps me out with some of the stuff i dont wanna ask (i love u bea!!!! shoutout to the goat)
i especially did a ton of research right before writing this fic. i planned out so much of this in a google doc (and yet there are plot holes. Sigh) and i would recommend it!!!
if you don't know where to start, just search up stuff from that era (and add "-ai" to every search!!!). for example "2012 facebook", "2010s trends", "2000s fashion", "2012 celebrities" so that you can get a feel for the era. once you've got a good idea of what you're looking for, you can go more specific and even write in the stuff that you now know! (and thankfully for me, neymar launched his official instagram in march 2012, so peering through his own account and the comment section was so helpful)
hope this helps!!!! kisses
ps: wanted to add this but also i think mixing your interests? is good? like idk how to phrase this bit. but i found looking in the comment section of sao paulo fc or fluminense reels on instagram and facebook were really helpful. that is where i first found out that brazilians laugh with "kkkk" and "rsrsrs", even if it's a bit dated. most people who i used for reference who were commenting on those reels, when i clicked on their profile, were definitely millenials or older LOL
OMG nelli when i was back in my home country i was rummaging through my old books and saw that in one of my old italian textbooks from 9th grade there was the name “Martinelli” and my mind immediately went to you!!! I forgot to take a pic of it bcz my phone had died but i’ll take one asap and send it to you xxx
WAIT I LOVE THAT ILY it makes me so happy that my fave player reminds other ppl of me 🥹🥹🥹🥹
