Fae

20 (he/him) aro ace and agender literally just vibing

[draconym]

The eye doctor is the most fun doctor you can go to. They never steal your blood. They never make you get naked and put on a paper dress. They're just like, "Can you see these letters? It's fine if you can't, we can fix that." And they don't even spell anything.

[draconym]

[shaneposting]

weird how some of you are so openly anti-kink when it’s obvious that nothing would make you harder than being first in line to throw tomatoes at people in the stocks for committing thought crimes

[scunthotter]

Why would you hate Ilya? That's literally #MyIlya.

[scunthotter]

Like what would you even say to hate on him? Like oh no, he's too funny and sexy and his dick is too big? Be for real.

[gayhockeyshow]

[knownqueerbaiter]

calming myself from work stress by picturing happy shane on his knees in ibiza

[knownqueerbaiter]

i think anywhere in north america he’d be too stressed about leaks to ever explore his exhibitionism more seriously but he’s a little drunk on his honeymoon and he and ilya are in a dark loud club an ocean away where you have to put a sticker over your phone camera to get in and he’s kneeling with his eyes closed + mouth open around his husband’s cock as ilya strokes his hair and cheeks and is telling him how good he is and how pretty he looks and how everyone here wants him but only ilya gets to have him bc he’s his husband, he’s ilya’s forever now, the others can look but not touch. and shane is genuinely in heaven, his face is a little flushed and he keeps smiling around ilya’s dick

[shaneposting]

always funny to me when people are in disbelief that x kink is being written for y pairing when fic has been a way for people to explore kink since the dawn of time. ‘why would anyone write him as a sadist i don’t get it :(’ i hate to break it to you my guy but people are writing noncon about characters from kids cartoons who never interact in canon. if that’s happening then surely you can understand why people are writing kinky d/s fic about a character who is canonically shown to be dominant during a variety of explicit sex scenes

[smokingrozanov]

Miku Binder Ilya Rozanov

[smokingrozanov]

anyway back to this blog’s actual purpose. Ilya would love to find any way to say ‘six seven’ at their hockey camp & get every child around him chanting SIX SEVEN SIX SEVEN

[space-bakery]

if you’re still taking prompts- matching tattoos

Shane had been four Modelos in up at the lake when he told Ilya he would consent to a matching tattoo for Ilya's birthday if he could beat Shane around the trail. The loop is just shy of six ks and every single morning without fail Shane laps it in about twenty-two minutes, Ilya hot on his heels. When Ilya pushed past him the following morning to get a foot over by the trailhead marker he let out an ear-splitting yawp that Shane found very unnecessary.

Yes, he should have factored in the Modelos. Yes, he suspects sabotage. Yes, he is shitting himself.

Now they have back-to-back appointments with an artist in Hintonburg who Bood likes, because Ilya's preferred guy returned to Denver after some visa trouble. Evidently paperwork was not his forte.

Meanwhile, Ilya keeps airdropping Shane screenshots from the studio's Instagram - arrow-pierced hearts that read MOM and ugly sprawling scorpions and busty pinups in black and white. Cliché bullshit.

"This style is called American traditional, very classic," Ilya says, "but I don't know, maybe we like fine line better?"

"Stop fucking sending me these," Shane snaps. "You can literally just pass me your phone."

Shane obviously has no problem with pain. That part actually - well, he had Ilya jab a fingernail into his forearm with his best approximation of force, and it was a non-issue.

"But it really doesn't feel like that at all," Ilya told Shane when he said this.

"Then do it the way it feels," Shane had said.

Ilya shrugged. "Don't think I can. It's like. Buzzing. Moves around, but it stays with you."

"Yeah?" said Shane, shifting on the couch.

"Like if sunburn is made of bunches of needles, and they're all pressing down into you."

"Yeah," said Shane again, suddenly unable to feel his feet. "Can you, um. Can you do that nail thing again."

Anyway.

When they pull into the parlour ("Do not call it that, it's not 1949.") parking lot, Shane realises that the concept of "chattering teeth" isn't, as he had always thought, a wimp's hyperbole. Ilya's hand's stayed glued to his thigh the duration of the drive. He's kept the final designs under close wraps. Shane thinks he might puke. He's never felt this pathetic in his life. He didn't tell Yuna they were doing this - she's never much liked Ilya's tattoos, and it's possible this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. Forget gay son. Forget gay son gay marrying gay rival. Forget gay married gay son leaving Montreal. It's going to be the sight of her only child sporting a tarantula with Megan Fox's face on his elbow that does it. Or knuckle tattoos that say SOFT CORE. Or --

Ilya taps him: time to get out. Not once has he said anything to the effect of "You know, you don't actually have to do this." And why would he. Or should he. It is a beautiful June day in Ottawa and Shane is letting Ilya choose a permanent infection to shove under his skin.

When he thinks of it this way he is able to glide into the shop as though carried by travelator.

It's quieter in here than he expected. Shane's chaperoned many a plastered Metro into places like these trying and failing to appeal to their better angels or at least common sense and they were clubbier in feel, blasting bad alt playlists and echoing with laughter and an off-brand kind of locker room banter. There's none of that telltale buzzing machine noise, either. Shane looks at Ilya.

"What, Hollander? You were the one who wouldn't let me bring Andrew to the house."

"I just think it's probably more sterilised here," mutters Shane. "You booked the shop out?"

"Well I wasn't going to let anyone else see you like this," says Ilya.

Shane swallows. Andrew emerges, says hello. He's a bald guy in his thirties with gold wire aviator glasses. This relaxes Shane ever so slightly. Neither of their type.

"Come on down," says Andrew. "Pick a table, any table."

Ilya chooses the middle right. Not that it matters. He sits down on it. Shane hovers. Ilya glances to his side. Shane hops up next to him so they're sitting shoulder to shoulder. He's wearing a loose tank but he's sweating into it in ways he's never sweat before.

It's the permanence.

"So, this is quite the honour," says Andrew. Tattoo artists must be contracted to speak like this, thinks Shane. Somewhere between carney and a person who writes poetry on a typewriter. "I understand this is your first piece, Shane?"

"It is," says Shane, voice compressed and run through an anonymiser. To his ears. He concentrates on Ilya's breath.

"I'll go first, Andrew," says Ilya. Shane glares at him. What the fuck? He wanted to go first. Now he's going to have to--

"You can wait, малыш," says Ilya, in Russian. He rolls down his shorts. "I want it here, on my hip," he says to Andrew.

Shane's mouth falls open. They hadn't discussed location. Hipbone is. It's pretty hot.

"Sure," says Andrew. "Let me just get...." he wheels himself over to a desk, grabs a sheet of transfer paper.

On it, reversed, in stark black gothic looking figures: the number 24.

Shane barks out a laugh.

"You like it?" grins Ilya. "I love even numbers," he tells Andrew, who laughs a bit.

"Oh my god," Shane says. But then--

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Shanya," says Ilya. "Watch."

Shane barely breaks eye contact as Ilya gets his jersey number tattooed onto his body. Looks at Ilya's face as he lies down, and Andrew shaves him. Transfers the stencil. Turns on the gun. Ilya smirks at him when the whining starts up.

In Russian he says to Shane: "Sounds like you."

Shane isn't sure how he gets through the next half hour. He starts getting hard about half a dozen times, and it's only by picturing his parents dead in a car crash à la Bruce Wayne that he kills it every time.

Andrew seems to be quite thorough. He bandages Ilya up. 24 marked up 2.4 inches high. It's.

"Now you," says Ilya, smirking. Shane levitates.

Andrew grabs another piece of paper. Same font. Shane's nothing but gamma waves. Mirror image 81, like he thought. But. It's--

"A temporary tattoo?" Shane all but yells.

Ilya is laughing to himself in the way that Shane really fucking hates. Like that dog from Wacky Races. Shane hits his chest hard.

"No," he says.

"No?" says Ilya, a cherub lifted from church. He's giving Shane an easy way out. Which makes it so much worse.

"No! I didn't-- no." Shane turns to Andrew. "I want it for real. As big as his."

Ilya raises his eyebrows.

"Okay," says Andrew, uncertain. Shane doesn't know how Ilya coached him, but he probably didn't think he was getting in the middle of a marital spat today.

Wait, wait wait. No. This is ridiculous. He cannot get a tattoo out of spite. Ilya's not saying anything, just looking at him with curiosity and amusement. Shane thinks hard.

"Sorry. Actually, I know this is kind of-- could we maybe make it fit on one knuckle? Like on my ring finger. Would that be too small?"

"What," says Ilya, quietly.

"That's good, right?" Shane asks him. "I've always been pissed I can't wear your band."

Ilya answers by kissing him. It's chaste by their standards. Shane smiles big and stupid.

"Give me just a sec," says Andrew, who's elected not to see any of this. Shane likes him, he's decided.

It really doesn't take long, in the end. When the gun makes contact with his left hand Ilya's gripping the right one even tighter.

[gooseburningriverforest]

Shane and the Centaurs

Post TLG, the same was that it breaks the Hollanders' heart when they see Ilya tear up over something so normal (calling to say hi instead of asking for something, paying for a meal at a restaurant despite Ilya definitely being able to afford it, buying him a sweater for the winter, etc.), it breaks Ilya and eventually the Centaurs' hearts when they see Shane be surprised or a bit overly grateful or apologetic for something that is literally not a big deal.

Shane preemptively defends his ginger ale during a visit to the bar after a game? Bood goes, "Maybe I should try that, but with cranberry juice. I need a new drink option now that I have a kid."

Shane gets tired of the club, but knows Ilya's not ready to leave yet, and he doesn't want to cut his husband's night short, so he quietly gets up to leave. Of course, the Centaurs notice, and Shane braces for the impact, for the "Going to bed already, Hollander? Goody-two-shoes heading out before curfew?" or "Golden boy of hockey trying to be a good role model and go to bed early?"

But all he hears is a smattering of, "Oh, bye Hollzy! We'll make sure your husband gets back safely."

The media manages to get its grubby hands on the other players that aren't Ilya or Bood, asking them, "What is it like having to married players on the same team?"

Shane overhears the question from his corner and internally panics, because while knows they accept them because Troy and Harris are a couple, what if they do have a problem sharing a locker room with a gay couple and -

"It's great," Holmberg says. "Our captain is happy all the time and we get to watch two actual legends on the ice in real time."

"But isn't it a bit... awkward to have to share the locker room with a couple?" one scummy journalist asks.

"I mean sometimes -" And Shane is about to have a panic attack, an honest-to-God panic attack because what does that mean - "only because it just reminds me of single I am."

"Yeah," LaPointe pipes up. "Watching the greatest hockey players of our time be in love with each other really hits you with the single stick. It's like they read each other's minds, and I can barely figure out if a woman is interested in me."

At one of Bood's BBQ, and friends and family are invited to this one. One of the kids loudly proclaims they need help with their math homework ("If you'd done it yesterday like you said you would, Timmy, you wouldn't have to do it now."), and Shane is waiting for someone to to shout "Ask Shane. He knows." But someone says, "Ask Hayes or Haas. They're trying to make a comic to make math fun. They need the research."

Quietly and without fuss, the Centaurs simply accept Shane into their fold. Some nights, Ilya has to just hold him or lie on top of him from being overwhelmed at the sheer decency he's shown.

In the same way that Shane secretly wishes he could throw a punch or two at Grigori and Alexei, Ilya wishes the same at the Metros. And would you look at that! They have a couple games against them, so he gets to have his wish.

[space-bakery]

a little prompt: "night changes", hollanov

Ilya's phone dings loudly - he accidentally bumped it off silent a few days ago and hasn't bothered to change it back thanks to the incidental boon of Shane's irritation at the sound combined with the resulting experiment of, like, what can he get Shane to do while he's pissed that Ilya isn't checking his phone, turns out: a lot - as Shane's brushing his teeth and Ilya's watching his bathroom choreography from their bed. Shane knows he's being ogled but he isn't doing anything about it, so Ilya rolls his eyes and rolls over to see who the fuck wants something -- there's a text from Sveta.

you're gonna shit is all it says. There's a video attachment. He starts playing it and pauses ten seconds in.

"Shanya," he calls out at an unnecessary volume, scrambling for an iPad, any iPad. They're going to need a bigger screen.

"What," says Shane, who's waterpiking.

"Come see this," he says, airdropping the video to himself.

Shane spits - Ilya would know that sound at a hundred decibel construction site, at a rave, at the Indy 500 - and comes to perch next to Ilya on the bed, frowning. Ilya starts the video up again.

It's terrible quality because it's from he would guess maybe twenty? years ago, and it must have been shot on the silver digital camera Sveta was toting everywhere in those days, which he hasn't thought about in decades. Everyone at boarding school had them, she had claimed. It was full of debauched flash photos that could have gotten her grounded for life, and worse. Anyway it's her high-pitched teenage voice at his old rink in Moscow, a deadpan narrator following a blurry figure on the ice who is nevertheless very clearly, even through the grain and sands of time, extremely skilled.

"There he goes," she says, all the way from 2007, "the great hope of Russia."

The figure - Ilya, obviously - executes a flashy maneuver to come to a sudden stop in front of his documentarian.

"Are you filming me," he says, grinning.

"Fuck," says Shane, a livewire of attention next to Ilya on the bed. He taps the screen and zooms in. "You're like. What. Seventeen here?"

Trust Shane to be able to carbon date him. Ilya squeezes the meat of his thigh. "Think so," he says.

"Fuck," says Shane again, pressing play.

"So, Ilyusha," says Sveta, "you've heard the news?"

"Новости," Shane echoes her now in his unthinking way.

"Don't tell me," says teenage Ilya, maybe the youngest seventeen year old of all time. "They've heard about my cock in America and they're lining up on their knees at the airport."

Adult Ilya snorts at this squeaky mouse. Shane shakes his head, but he's smiling.

A svelte arm reaches out to smack his elbow pad. "They don't want your ugly cock there, freak. No. About the Canadian kid who's going to beat you."

Both Shane and Ilya reel back from the iPad at the same time.

"What," says Shane, his smile now threatening to break its own record.

"Yeah, I've seen that guy," says original teeth Ilya. "Beat me? Him? He's ни рыба ни мясо."

"Excuse me? I'm what?" says Shane.

"Oh, very very hot and perfect for me in every way," Ilya says. But Shane has already pulled it up on his traitorous translator app, the one he uses so rarely these days.

"'Neither fish nor fowl,'" reads Shane. "'Used to express an opinion of mediocrity'. Asshole! You were already shit scared of me!"

"No I fucking wasn't," says Ilya. "Does this look like a kid who was scared of anything?" He jabs the pixellated stud. Shane gives him a look. "Let's just finish the fucking video," says Ilya.

"They're saying he might be the best in the world," says Sveta.

"Who's saying that? Blind people? Tourism board of Canada?"

Sveta laughs infuriatingly. "A lot of people, you arrogant cunt. One of my dad's old teammates said he saw--"

The camera jolts. Suddenly Ilya's face fills the entire screen like a biblical whale. "Listen up, Sergey Vetrov's old teammate, and anyone else who's so braindead they need to hear this. My name is Ilya Rozanov and I'm the best fucking hockey player to ever walk this earth. You're actually fucking lucky I'm giving you advance notice. In three years' time you'll all wish you had sucked my dick when you had the chance. And you! Little Canadian boy! I'm going to destroy you. I'm going to wipe the ice with you so hard you'll be begging for mercy. No, really, you're going to wish you never even picked up a stick, you'll be crying so bad at how good I am and how shit fucking terrible you are by comparison. My name will be the last thing on your lips before you slink off to a life selling used Hondas. Got that? Hot bitches, come find me."

A wink the size of Ontario. The video ends.

"Oh my god," is all Shane manages to choke out. "Used--"

"Well, you are crying," says Ilya, feeling faintly shellshocked.

Shane's laughing so hard he's passed over into the realm of seizure.

"Show some respect," says Ilya, pummelling his shoulder. "You're in bed with the best hockey player to ever walk this earth. You should be kissing my feet."

"Sorry, who here has four Cups? You kiss my fucking feet," says Shane.

Ilya growls, lunges for one of Shane's ankles. Shane snaps it away underneath him before Ilya can get to it. "You think that's going to stop me?" he says. "You know my last measured shot speed?"

"Hundred and nine," says Shane, automatically. "But--"

Ilya yanks down his briefs and slaps Shane's ass so hard Shane yells. The print takes a good minute to go from red to white.

"Jesus!" Shane hisses, but he's putting it on, it's really one of the mildest hits in Ilya's canon. "You're literally exactly the same."

"You love it," says Ilya, working his hands through his hair to see if he can get that swoop he used to spend hours trying to perfect.

"Yeah," says Shane, twisting to get eyes on Ilya's mouth. He grins. "Good thing I basically met you at the airport on my knees. Can you send me this? I'm gonna need to watch it again a stupid amount of times."

Ilya kisses Shane, his teenage little self's wet dream. You just never fucking know.

[asgardarchaea]

Something I think about with the Long Game ending is the sex scenes. I don't necessarily mind Ilya's first reaction to Shane struggling being sex. I feel like thats the very first way Shane and Ilya learned to communicate, and it's something that settles both Shane and Ilya. The problem is that there's nothing after. Sex is how they first learned to communicate, but by the end of HR they're starting to learn to communicate with their words, and that learning process is ostensibly one of the big points of conflict in TLG. To make their character arcs work, Shane and Ilya should be communicating verbally and figuring out a compromise that makes both of them at least mostly happy at least at the end of the book. This would be a way to show Ilya as the good partner that he's supposed to be. Instead, Ilya fucks Shane and there's no follow up conversation. This lack of communication makes it seem like Ilya does not care about Shane outside of him being some kind of sex doll and is a shitty way to finish the book and a terrible ending for both Ilya and Shane.

Really, by the end of the book, they should have talked about the Boxing day fight, Ilya retconning his move to Ottawa, Shane refusing to mention the homophobia from the metros organization, the Russia problem, and the impacts that being outed have had on them.

I think that doing this, along with making the move to Ottawa less of a humiliation for Shane (give him the A and/or co-captaincy, market worthy pay, and making Ilya not make fun of Shane for being new to the team) could have made the ending more in-character, happier, and still have the outcome Reid seemed to want for the characters.

[beardconnoisseur]

#THE ISSUE IS THAT SEX IS THE ONLY COMFORT SHANE IS ALLOWED#Packaged with a dismissive comment that implies shanes problems are all in his head#sex in and of itself isn’t bad#physical comfort is fine to provide#but you have all the same problems you had before dicks came out#you cannot fuck your partner better and call it a day#Shane is shown connecting verbally and emotionally with Ilya#he talks about Ilya’s problems with him#he validates them and helps Ilya process them#Shane’s problems should receive the same dignity and ILYA should receive the dignity of being able to provide comfort beyond his dick#it degrades both of their characters to act like Shane just needs to be fucked better and Ilyas problem solving ability is limited to his#*taking out his cock#I feel like one of the things that drives me bonkers about the fandom is that it’s so blatant how much everyone WANTS Ilya to be like this#but he just ISNT in canon. i see so many fics of Ilya being angry about the metros did and defensive of Shane and I want that too#but guys canonically he does not give a single shit#he is actively and expressively happy that Shane had everyone turn on him because it means Shane came to the centaurs#he describes his joy as overwhelming#when everyone starts turning on Shane Ilya’s internal monologue is devoid of sympathy or concern and he only talks about how excited he is#about it and how he doesn’t want to get his hopes up too much#the Ilya that lives in my head is protective loverboy Ilya who thinks Shane Hollander is the greatest thing in the world but guys that is#simply not in canon and it KILLS me (via @polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup)

[rainbow-femme]

I love the idea of Shane being not just good at hockey but good at all sports, to the point where it fascinates and infuriates the other Centaurs

Because what do you mean they went to the batting cages for some silly fun to watch everyone flail at an unfamiliar sport, only for Shane to need three practice swings before figuring out the force and timing needed to start hitting every single pitch? What do you mean he sets the course record at the mini golf place they have the Pike twins birthday at? What do you mean he learned how to play cricket over a long weekend in the UK? What do you MEAN your Canadian ass that grew up on a calm, tiny lake went to visit Rose in LA and just learned to surf from “some guy” one of the days she was busy??

Shane doesn’t get why they all think it’s so crazy. He’s a professional athlete, he’s good at full body and mind control as well as adaptability and hand-eye coordination, and he’s so used to being the best in the world at hockey that he views being mundanely good at anything else as barely noticeable. He argues with Troy over whether he counts as being good at basketball just because he killed them all at the basketball shooting game at a Dave and Buster’s

They all start making bets to see who can find a sport Hollander isn’t good at. Harris is convinced he’ll win with figure skating because Shane’s muscle memory will want to work against him with a technique that’s so similar but also so different, only for Shane to come out of an afternoon learning from his old friend who was at the Olympics with the ability to do simple jumps and spins and is insisting the whole team learn so they can incorporate it into plays. Harris is not allowed to make suggestions after that

Ilya just sits back and lustily watches his husband destroy their friends at volley ball, wrestling, tennis, broom ball, and ultimate frisbee. Shane participates in an all pro athlete Ninja Warrior event to raise money for charity and Ilya can’t watch the clips of Shane flying through the course like a bat out of hell unless he is able to fuck Shane immediately after it ends

[vaspider]

Pete Buttigieg is just a faggot.

It's very important to me that younger queers understand this: to the people who you're trying to be more respectable for when you say things like neopronouns set the trans movement back or you're why the cishets don't accept us or including [aces/bi people with the 'wrong kind' of partners/non-binary people/kinksters/non-passing trans ppl/furries/polyam people] just hurts us, can't you wait until we get all our rights before we talk about some of yours? -- to those people? Pete Buttigieg is just a fag.

On Sunday at Pride Northwest, some kids -- late teens, early 20s -- asked what our button I survived Reagan for this? meant. All of the queer adults at the tables making up our ad hoc counter looked at each other and sighed a little. Emet and another adult started to explain the way that the Reagan Administration handled -- or didn't handle -- the beginning of the AIDS crisis. How many people died. How much we were ignored. The Ashes Action. The Time Magazine article which explicitly blamed bisexual men for passing the pandemic to the cishet community, playing on all the worst stereotypical bullshit. The way that even when the CDC started paying attention, they were so focused on gay men that they ignored AIDS in the lesbian community, leading to the "women don't get AIDS, they just die from it" poster. And so on.

I finished counting out change and passed the last Bear Pride raised fist pin over to a bear a little older than me, then turned my head and interjected, "they didn't care until it started infecting more than just the fags." I turned my head back and handed him his change. He laughed bitterly and said, "remember when they called it 'gay cancer?'"

That what I need you to understand. The people for whom you are folding yourself into smaller and smaller boxes will never see you as anything but a freak. A queer. A dyke. A tranny. A fag.

Never.

These are people who will stand by and let you wither away and die alone, gasping for breath in a cinderblock room, and not even claim your ashes, and they will say you deserve it, because of your lifestyle. If they speak of you at all it will be by the wrong name, with the pictures you hate the most. They will curse at your lover, throw him out of the home you shared, and steal the gift you gave last Christmas to throw it in the trash just so he can't have it and they'll say Jesus loves you! while they do it. They'll feel good and righteous and blessed and holy and pure for doing it.

And for them, you spit in the eye of your sister. For them, you disavow your sibling. For their sake, you trim away bits of your heart and lace yourself up tight. Never too loud. Never too queer. Never inconvenient or embarrassing, never asking for too much.

Pete Buttigieg is what happens when your Boomer dad turns out gay. Middle America. Parents still married. Suburban-sprouted. Valedictorian. Harvard-educated. Rhodes Scholarship. Military service. More power to him: I hope he and Chasten are very happy together. Genuinely, I do.

You couldn't create a more respectable gay if you grew one in a lab run by concerned voter focus groups.

But Pete Buttigieg? Is just a fag.

That's the part you don't seem to get: when they abandoned us, they abandoned all of us. Rock Hudson was a beloved movie star and even personally friendly with that horrid pair of ambitious jackals. Nancy Reagan refused to help him get into the only place in the world that could treat him at the time, and he died.

It was 1985, 4 years after the CDC first released papers on what would eventually become known as HIV/AIDS and 7 years after the first known death from an infection from HIV-2. Reagan hadn't even said the word AIDS by the time Hudson died.

Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, and so am I. Unless I'm a dyke, which seems to depend on who's yelling what from which window and what day it is.

Yes, there will be people who genuinely love and accept you. Those people are worth all the frustration of the rest, thankfully, and they're the ones who love you in a pup mask or a leather harness and a neon jock like the ones sold by the men up the row from us last weekend. They're the ones who laugh out loud when you tell them you hid the word "dyke" in your company name, the ones who love you in all your messiness and uncertainty and the way you don't fit into neat boxes all scrubbed up and clean.

Most cishets, though... well, they don't actively mean you specifically any harm, at least not when they have to look at you. Not when you're right there in front of them. Maybe they'll be okay with you, personally, especially if you're the kind of gay who makes a good rhetorical device, and as long as you remain a good rhetorical device.

They need people to know that they don't have a problem with the gays, after all, and there you are, being all convenient. You make a nice token, and as long as you do, well. You're useful.

But they call you by your deadname when you're not around, and they put the wrong pronouns in your medical record even though they met you years after you came out, and they won't put themselves out to save you. Not one little bit.

I didn't want to be here again. The year I graduated from high school was the worst year of the AIDS crisis. The world into which I became an adult was a world in which an advisor and friend to Reagan, William F. Buckley, openly advocated for forcibly tattooing the HIV status of HIV+ gay men on their buttocks (and IV drug users on their forearms), and in which my father not only told me that when I was 14 or so, but when was told me that he'd advocated for that tattoo being "over their assholes."

(Buckley wrote that in '86, but he doubled down on it in 2005.

Fucker.)

But yeah. I didn't want to be here again. I wanted my daughter to inherit a better world. I wanted Obergefell and Lawrence v. Texas and Hope & Change to really mean something. I work for it, today and all days. I haven't given up.

I need you to know that, too. This isn't a white flag. I'm not surrendering. This isn't over. To misquote Henry Rollins, this is what Marsha and Sylvia and Stormé and Leslie and Brenda and Auntie Sugar trained us for. This is punk rock time.

But I need you to understand that if Pete Buttigieg is just a fag, if that human embodiment of a Wonder Bread, mayo and Oscar Meyer bologna sandwich is not respectable enough for them -- and he's not -- then the rest of us have absolutely no hope of measuring up. Not even if we trim away every colorful, beautiful piece of our community, not even if the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence vanish into the ether, not even if we sacrifice the five elements of vogue on the altar of white supremacist cishet middle-class conformity: we can't trim ourselves down to something they'll accept.

The only other option is radical acceptance of our queer selves. The only other option is solidarity. The only other option is for fats and femme queens and drags and kinksters and queers and zine writers and sex workers and furries and addicts and kids and the ones who can look us in the eye and see all of us to say we're here, we're queer, get used to it just the way we did 30 years ago. It's revolutionary, complete and total acceptance of our entire community, not just the ones the cishets can pretend to be comfortable with as long as we don't challenge them too much, or it's conceding the shoreline inch by inch to the rising waters of fascism until we've got nowhere left to stand and some of us start drowning.

That's it. Either it's all of us or it's none of us, because if we leave the answer up to the Reagans of the world and all the people who enabled him in the name of lower taxes and Democrats who wring their hands, weeping oh I don't agree with it but we'll lose the election if we fight it right now, the answer is none of us.

The brunch gays can come, too, I guess.

[ruggerdavey]

I was around 8 when my oldest sister got her drivers license and started volunteering at a local AIDS organization. Her best friend (then and now) was openly gay in the early 90s in small town America, and I think this is a large part of what sparked her desire to help. It wasn’t long after she started volunteering when she brought a new friend home for dinner. He was gay, he had AIDS, he was blind due to complications from that, and he was SO funny. We loved him. He came over for dinner quite a bit after that.

Some time later, his was the first funeral I ever went to. I was still in elementary school. And it wasn’t a real funeral because his mother had confiscated his ashes and almost of all his things, despite not having spoken to him for I don’t know how long. She certainly wasn’t the one caring for him when he was sick and dying. That was a friend (maybe partner? I don’t actually know). I don’t think I was even 10 when this showed me how hateful people could be.

We helped make a panel for him for the AIDS quilt. My sister went to a massive display of it at one point (maybe on the National Mall?), and I remember her recounting how she lost her shit at someone who stepped up to them and said something hateful. People were there to honor and mourn thousands of people who had died of AIDS, and someone used that as an opportunity to air their homophobia.

So I am totally with @vaspider - I agree with everything they say like 1000%

[vaspider]

Thank you for sharing this.

[ruggerdavey]

@vaspider thank YOU for the original post. This was a part of my early life that was foundational to the beliefs and morals I have today, and I think not enough people - especially nowadays - take the time to remember what we learned from the not so distant past.

[enby-axels]

ilya has this incorrect perception that he's sacrificing himself for shane by staying closeted, which is how he rationalizes his unhappiness and resentment at shane for being able to come out when he couldn't. a lot of fans buy into this perception and from there they somehow come to the conclusion that shane is making ilya stay in the closet. but that's not true at all!

their boxing day argument never implies any such "agreement" between them. it instead shows that shane was never aware of ilya's desire to come out or disclose their relationship to anyone and that he's confused by ilya's anger and any implication of ilya's closeted status representing some kind of unfairness in their relationship, all of which imply this is something they've never communicated about. and at worst, shane is wary of disclosing their relationship to someone who's not a close friend to either of them. (and, well, the "this guy might be gay but he was a homophobic douchebag to me before" of it all could be a factor too, although this angle is left unexplored)

later on, ilya himself admits that he's not actually sure if he's ready to go public or even come out to his closest friends whom he's lost touch with, because he's afraid of losing them. there's no "shane told me to cut them off or not come out to them," it's "i was distant because i was afraid." it was his choice. they were all his choices.

and ilya is afraid to take ownership over any of these choices because that's a scary thing to do for anyone who's chronically depressed and whose assumptions that all these major life changes (leaving a country that was making him unhappy or feel unsafe, starting the relationship he always wanted) would fix him were proven wrong. if you escape all the bad stuff and you're still unhappy, what do you do then? who do you blame? because you have to blame someone. you need to have something to overcome to reach your happily ever after, and it can't be yourself. because there's no defeating or escaping yourself, only a long and uphill journey toward a recovery that may never be complete

edit: i went back to the hr epilogue and somehow i forgot it's already stated that ilya has the same exact freedom to come out to his friends that shane does, and there's nothing about this mutual agreement being forced by one party on the other. the freedom was always there! ilya just struggles to actually be free in practice due to his fear of rejection, which is a perfectly valid and sympathetic fear and one can understand why he would (unjustifiably) redirect his resentment at shane for not having those same reservations. final nail in the coffin of the "shane forced ilya into the closet" idea that already has absolutely zero textual basis

[mybloodstream-caffeine]

Hollanov loOOoVe kissing oh my god they love it soso muchhhh. Now that they're actually together and they have this incredibly valuable resource called time, they just spend hours and hours making out, long lazy stretches of time where they're just exchanging indulgent kisses back and forth. It's insane. They emerge from their little necking love nest with their hair all fucked up, lips swollen and spit-shiny, mouths BRIGHT red almost bruised, all dreamy and dazed. I think they could both get off just from kissing, I really do

[mutinsfromthemoon]

shane and ilya are on their honeymoon, lying on a beach towel with ilya’s head resting on shane’s chest. ilya lifts his head to look at shane, seeing his husband completely relaxed and almost asleep and he looks down at shane’s shoulder to gaze at his freckles which he’s absolutely in love with. he notices that shane has a few new ones after all the sun they’ve been soaking up and he points to a few and goes “these ones here are new” and shane lifts his head slightly and looks at ilya and asks “how do you know i have new freckles?” and ilya kisses his husband’s shoulder and says “because i’m completely crazy and obsessed with you” and shane laughs and lays his head back down and says “weirdo” and ilya says poking shane’s side making him laugh “as if you wouldn’t notice a new mole on me” and shane replies “you know i’m also crazy and obsessed about you” and ilya breaks into this huge smile and kisses shane’s lips and then his shoulder again and rests his head back on his husband’s chest.

[loontattoo]

shane and ilya are best friends by the way. like they literally like each other BY THE WAY