Als Vuur

20's 💃she/her

[paparoach]

[ceruleana]

Eva Stratt's pov of phm is kinda insane really. Because it's basically being told, hey humanity WILL go extinct soon. but we've decided that if one person makes it through all the levels of the Torment Nexus our chances of survival might increase. they might also not. Anyway. We think you're the best person to do this. Your reward is that everyone will hate you forever.

And you're like well. I'd rather trust myself to the fate of the world than anyone else. And I'd rather not let anyone else suffer the Torment Nexus just because of my own feelings. That seems kinda selfish. Alright sure.

So you enter the Torment Nexus. Each level has you pressing buttons like, [abduct innocent scientists to your vat: chances of humanity's survival increases by 0.005%] [everyone disliked that] [congrats! your moral goodness has decreased!].

The later levels get even worse. [blow up Antarctica: chances of humanity's survival increases by, ummm who knows ????] [total humans negatively affected: ????] [congrats! you're an ecoterrorist!].

Then you reach the final level. It reads: [through this door you'll break the news to your friend that he needs to die.] And you're like, wait he has to die??? I have to tell him?? But that's incredibly fucked up. After I went through the Torment Nexus as well. But it's the last level. So oh well. I can do this I suppose. Rather me than anyone else.

You enter the level and you friend is standing next to a cliff. You go over to him and say, hey this really fucking sucks but I've just learnt you need to jump off the cliff. Then we might be able to save humanity for real though. Maybe billions of people can survive if this works.

Then he turns to you and is like, are you fucking insane? And starts sprinting away from the cliff. Suddenly you have a gun in your hand. You're like, no wait. I don't want to do this. For real? I gotta shoot him for real? [Chances of survival if he lives: 0%. Chances of survival if he dies: maybe NOT 0%......????]. You pull the trigger. [congrats! you're a murderer!]

[sunnypeachyy]

hudson in mykonos

[mymansmoon]

once shane gets over his shock they briefly talk logistics. when exactly ilya intends to go to the cottage. how long he'd like to stay. shane distractedly assures ilya he'll come up with an excuse for his parents as to why he suddenly won't be able to see them for an extended period of time. ilya feels slightly bad about it, but not too much. the hollanders have spent a lifetime with shane. ilya's only just found the conviction to ask for two weeks.

"okay," shane says, after their plan has taken crude shape. the details will come later, after they put their phones down. "okay," he repeats, firmer. then soft again, "I'll see you soon."

ilya feels his strings get cut. he leans against a wall. "see you soon, shane."

svetlana is back in the living room when ilya returns. she whips around on the couch, phone in hand, says, "what the fuck did scott hunter do when I left the room? for five minutes?"

it's a rhetorical question. the tv broadcast has—for now—moved onto highlights of the actual game, but she has her social media open on her phone. ilya makes a vague, loose gesture with his shoulder. "kissed his pretty boyfriend on the ice."

she swears quietly, engrossed again in her feed. "unbelievable. it's your fault I missed it, ilya. your niece's gift is in your suitcase," she adds distractedly. it is. the whale plushie sitting atop the stack of kids' novels sitting atop his serviceably folded clothes. not as neat as hollander's always are. ilya runs his thumb over the edge of his phone case.

"svetlana."

"mm."

"I will not be going to russia."

she breaks from her phone. frowns at him. "what do you mean?"

"I have to be somewhere else."

"where?"

"ottawa."

blinking green eyes. svetlana knows him better than anyone on this planet. he sees her gears turning. there is nothing on the surface of his life that would take him to a place like ottawa, nothing even on the deeper layers svetlana has almost exclusive access to. but there are few things about him that she is completely unaware of. what he has refused to lay bare for her she's deduced the shape of anyway, purely from the nature of his refusals. he sees her eyes flick to the tv. an ad for beer is playing. that's not what she's thinking of.

"is it for a person."

she says more than asks it. either way ilya responds, "yes."

"jane."

"yes."

she lifts her chin, slowly. "montreal jane who is from ottawa." they look at each other, ilya doesn't speak. eventually she shakes her head. "shane hollander, ilya? really?"

ilya sits. she laughs, incredulous, but also triumphant. she'll be annoyed at him later for abandoning her to his family on a moment's notice, but for now there is shane. and hunter. and hunter's surprise boyfriend. and shane. and shane. and shane.

[thewingedwalrus]

There are so many things echolocation would see that can't be seen with eyes, and also so many things eyes would see that can't be seen with echolocation. How often do Rocky and Grace each find the other apparently staring at nothing like a cat seeing ghosts???

[galacticsabc]

part two of Grace knitting on the Hail Mary. This time, he's crochet his besties.

[ilyarozanovsmouth]

Concept:

Ilya does love seeing old photos of Shane. Fat Baby Shane™ in all his forms, toddler Shane in his little hockey gear, Shane in elementary school with a big missing-teeth smile, Shane blowing out the candles on his 10th birthday, Shane holding up his brand new driver's license at 16. The list goes on.

One day Yuna finds an old disposable camera. The expiration date on it says 2009. She tells Shane about it; it might have some old photos from his graduation on it or something. She'd gotten a digital camera around that time so she can't remember what she used this one for. Shane is pretty indifferent about it.

Yuna sends the camera off to some company that still develops old camera film. It's about 15 years old at this point, though, so whatever is on it might not even develop correctly.

A few weeks later Shane and Ilya are over for dinner. Yuna tells them she got the photos back and they actually turned out ok. She hands over the stack of 10 photos. Shane rolls his eyes, but Ilya grabs the photos and starts flipping through them. The first two look like they are from some school event; there's Shane surrounded by similarly aged kids in an auditorium. There's one of the three of them on Thanksgiving that year and another of the three of them with Yuna's parents at the same dinner. Two of David asleep on the couch with the family dog clearly taken on different days. One of a Christmas tree in the Hollander's living room. The next two are Shane on the ice in a rink that Ilya recognizes as the one in Regina. The one from their first World Juniors Tournament.

And Ilya freezes. The last photo in the stack is a close-up of Shane. He's in a white hoodie with a black coat over it. He has on a dark green beanie and he's standing next to the door to the rink. He's smiling for the camera and his freckles are crinkled near his eyes. It's the Shane that so awkwardly and so confidently introduced himself to Ilya the first time they met. The Shane that had tried so hard to talk to Ilya then. The Shane that Ilya could admit to himself now that he'd had a bit of a crush on already. His Shane.

His Shane was getting blurry as tears filled his eyes.

[deadgravity]

Go white boy go (sequel to this)

[deadgravity]

You don't have to grieve alone.

[cloudabserk]

thinking about how grace and rocky have to stay on opposite sides of that wall forever and ever and ever. and it’s worth it anyway.

lyrics from iris by the goo goo dolls

[arthnold]

[lavenderprose]

Shane also needs to interact with other gay men just to understand how truly lucky he is. He needs to hear someone go off about going on Grindr to find a top for the night and then finding out that all of the guys who have the 'Hung' tag on their profile are packing like five and a half inches at MOST and then Shane has to be like "Oh that. Yeah that sounds rough." Meanwhile he lost his anal virginity to a knockout with model looks who works out for a living and started their relationship by jerking his enormous hog at him in a communal shower which has always been one of Shane's top five fantasies. And he's literally never had to be on The Apps because he's the bottom of all time actually and the DomTop with the enormous dick imprinted on him like a fucking duckling the first time Shane came untouched under him which was, I cannot stress this enough, when he LOST HIS VIRGINITY.

Like shut the fuck up Shane Hollander how does it feel to be the chosen one. He has to confront all of this because he needs to know that he has, once again, won at life in every meaningful way. And then he can sit there like :] while that sad bottom over there bemoans the Grindr biome.

[chernozemm]

Love the soft, curious moments of them sharing about their own cultures, biology, etc. I do think Rocky would have a field day when Grace explains skin as a very sensitive and permeable organ with lots of stuff packed tight on the surface. Since goosebumps are very tactile, I thought Rocky would enjoy hearing those.

Also, bonus.

Because it is endlessly entertaining to me to consider how deep in the trenches Rocky is.

[sandersstudies]

Every time you go in a public place and something ISN’T disgusting it’s because somebody cleaned it. Every time you feel comfortable using a public bathroom or sitting at a restaurant table or setting something on a gas station counter or playing on a playground it’s because somebody cleaned it.

Thank you to everyone who cleans the world, especially those who are underpaid and under appreciated.

[my-life-is-a-sidequest]

I worked in a supermarket for 7 years and I don't think I can understate just how much cleaning you had to do for it to look clean (it very often where not in the places you aren't supposed to see)

[sandersstudies]

True for food service, retail establishments, gyms, outdoor areas, schools, religious buildings, office buildings, etc. People usually only notice when a space is NOT clean, meanwhile every time a space is clean it’s only because of the diligent work of janitors, maintenance staff, custodians, parks workers, or volunteers.

[firstprinced]

Heated Rivalry episode 1.06 and chapter 23.

[annabelle--cane]

yknow I'm feeling a bit brave so I will venture to say what this blighted essay's pitch actually is: reading project hail mary (novel and film) as a ravishment fantasy. in both main threads of the narrative grace is brought wildly out of his element and pulled into the orbit of a mysterious foreign stranger who is significantly stronger / richer / more powerful than him, forced to accept unsolicited lavish gifts and personal praise despite protests and discomfort, and made to live in isolated locations in extremely close proximity to these people with no say in the matter, all of which are common motifs in ravishment fantasies. on her own, stratt also brings in other common motifs of restraints, drugging, being above the law, multiple kidnappings (I'm doing crazy things with the classical definition of "rape" as in "abduction" and its shared etymology with "rapture" as in "being taken to the heavens"), and the very specific yet still common motif of "otherwise trustworthy partner goes too far and doesn't take 'no' for an answer." rocky on his own brings in the overprotective flavor common to a lot of dark romance novel heroes, i.e. "I make sure you sleep and I like to watch you while you do it, I make sure you eat enough even if you've got baggage about it, I make inhuman displays of strength when you're injured, and as long as I'm around I'll make sure nothing bad ever happens to you ever again."

the issue I was running into with researching this a few weeks ago is that almost all of the scholarly writing on the content of people's forced-sex fantasies focuses solely on women's fantasies and starts with the research question of "why would women enjoy imagining such a horrible misogynistic thing?" despite surveys often showing that men have force-fantasies (where they are the one being forced) at very comparable rates to women. my hypothesis for a bit was "either men's fantasies are exactly the same as women's or they're completely different in [x] way," which was disproven interestingly when I did finally find something about men's force-fantasies: in content they are almost exactly the same as women's fantasies but the emotional motivations are often different in [y] way, which I hadn't expected. and [y] also super applies to my buddy ryland, perhaps even more than my original [x] hypothesis.

my hopes for writing this are twofold: a) to address the question I sometimes see phm audience members come away with of "if grace likes his life by the end and doesn't seem that mad about all of that, is the message supposed to be 'violation of bodily autonomy is good, actually?'", and b) to lightly resist one of the prevailing notions in the study of forced-sex fantasies, that ravishment fantasies are solely abstracted and fantastical and pleasurable and are completely 100% separate from fearful paranoid imaginings of / flashbacks to realistic sexual violence.

[annabelle--cane]

oh also: the most common interpretation of why people have ravishment fantasies is that it allows the fantasist to disavow a desire they feel ashamed of because, in the fiction of the forcing, they don't *want* it at all, they're being made to do whatever it is and can't be considered at fault. as I allude to in my final paragraph of the original post, I think it's a tad more nuanced, but there's definitely a lot of truth to that. grace can tell stratt that he's not smart or important or capable or brave or selfless enough to do what she wants, but she'll ignore it, make him do it anyway, and kit him out with skilled staff members and expensive lab equipment and coffee just the way he likes it. it's a fantasy of being respected and heroic and good whether he likes it or not.

with rocky, the fantasy is of being forced to be loved and protected. rocky decides to initiate contact, he decides that he's moving into the hail mary, he decides that he's always going to watch grace sleep even if grace says he doesn't need it, he decides to gift grace the fuel to get home even when grace pretends he doesn't want it, and he decides he's not going to let grace die to save him even when grace says he's made his choice. the two scenarios allow grace to experience the rewards of being selfless without needing to be so gauche as to ever say he thinks he's that good of a person AND to experience the rewards of being selfish without saying he thinks he deserves to be cared for.

[firstprinced]

ik the club scene is rough to some (not to me i love angst) but god can we have a moment of silence how hot ilya looks here like that is diabolical