yeah yeah i took an unintentional hiatus because farm stuff and no time and little internet. the bigger work is still stuck, sorta lodged sideways ever-given-style in the suez canal of my mind, but here is not quite a crackfic that I have inevitably taken too seriously.
I kept trying to get other people to write this premise and nobody quite did, so here's Shane Hollander taking Ilya Rozanov's word for it about his dick size, and maybe over-preparing.
Nine, on AO3
Maybe he just had to buy a dildo and compare it that way. It wasn’t like he couldn’t stand to have a few around. But he didn’t want to be the kind of guy who had like eight dildos. Was he going to be the-- what was that fairy tale? Goldilocks. He was going to be Shane Goldilocks and the Eight Dildos. This one’s too small! This one’s too big! This one vibrates--
God help him.
one of the things i find most compelling about ilya and shane is. well. imbalance. it's so rich it's so goddamn full of minerals it's insane. yes there's the closer to the surface stuff. the shane has, ilya has not. friends, teammates, family. yes yes, all important, all good stuff, but it's more it's---
okay so ilya can read shane like a book, which is no surprise. this boy, with his upbringing? would be able to spot an emotion from a mile away. this boy has a masters degree in microexpressions and he would have graduated at the age of like, eight. the tempo of the tapping fingers on the bench, the weight of footfalls on the floorboards, the "is their bed made today?", "is he wearing his rings today?", the "she didn't hug me as tight and he shut the door just a bit too loudly and fuck i don't want to come home from hockey practice," because reading the room is surviving it.
that boy's every breath was inextricably tied to the unpredictable beast of one, nay, two, angry men and a desperately sad woman. there was no room left for him to expand.
enter ilya freshly, what, 17? hockey prodigy, safe from family-induced suffocation by 4000 odd miles. he's a pro. he clocks shane in about as long as it takes for him to light his fourth cigarette. he sees the freckles and that gay panic and he thinks, im going to have some fun.
and he clocks him again and again. he sees shane so well, he sees the perfectionism, he sees the pressure he sees the anxiety and the discomfort and the head-down-ass-up-yearning to get cracked and is blind only to the fact that shane could possibly see something worth more than hotel room fucks in him.
but over time? over years and years? the weight of seeing is heavy. particularly when it's not, well, reciprocated? at least not to the same extent. shane's particular brand of issues lend themselves to a kind of self-centredness that just does not give way to picking up on those microexpressions like ilya does. ilya has to reach that point of vulnerability (which is so utterly torturous for an avoidant) where he has to actually say the shit out loud, before Shane really notices and kicks himself into gear. that shit is heavyyyyy.
we are 11 years down the line by the end of TLG right? reid does touch on this a little bit in that book ya, but I guess, i want more. what does the next 11 years look like? this dynamic cannot continue and end well. so, what? someone put it under a microscope and lemme seeee
girl u gotta warn me before u point the bat signal directly in my eyes. (you pointed it at the sky i’m just already standing over it breathing heavily)
i think yes, not being anticipated in the way ilya has a 30-year endowed chair professorship in Clocking it Studies does hurt. to some extent hypervigilance is an implicit cry for someone else to be as careful with you as you are with the world
and also! shane is without an agenda or assumptions or intuition. he just asks, and he’d like to hear the answer, and he’s completely willing to go in the wrong direction and be physically turned towards the problem. and—it’s also okay if ilya isn’t ready to share. i would imagine that the implied patience of that, the “i’m here whether or not you rip yourself open for me,” is its own safety to be grateful for. two sides of a coin, maybe. i think for ilya much more than shane it’s not possible to get everything he needs from his romantic partner (part of why it irks me so bad that reid gave him no other intimate, consistent ties)—he needs, and presumably will, find other funny, damaged people with whom the ironic distance isn’t distance at all. also, like, how long does it take to completely shed the reflex to hide? i don’t think it ever goes away fully. a partner who’s bugged by that becomes its kind of stress
and when shane does make a jump or an inference it’s so plainly open: “hey, that’s not what this is, you and me. maybe it was at first, but not now and not for a long time.” what???? for someone who watched for danger, but who would also have caught and been hit just as brutally by vanishing glimpses of care and love, what a fucking relief that what you see is pretty much what you get (after some basic algebra about the closet and control issues and maybe some weird mom stuff. ilya’s got it), and that what you get is uncomplicated, whole, thorough devotion. secure attachment is no small gift
i dunno i think a lot about how one model for parity in relationships is based on equal rest. i do wonder whether on the whole ilya rests as much with shane as shane does with ilya. if he doesn’t i agree it’s for exactly the reasons you’ve enumerated
Lothiriel exists in LotR as a mere name in a genealogical table-- the youngest child, and only daughter, of Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth, she gets married to Eomer early in the First Age and provides him with at least one son. I wrote a great deal about her when I was new to the fandom.
This is my idea of what she and Eowyn, similar to her in age (four years older) would have gotten up to after the fall of Sauron, before the menfolk got back from their last foray into contested lands.
I got the tag on this and was like what's this about and clicked through and thought hey that sounds like something I'd like to read, wait did I write that, and sure enough. I wrote this. I haven't reread it but I'm about to.
I'm gonna guess that while this was uploaded to AO3 in 2014 I probably wrote it around a decade before that. I don't know if I could find out by looking back at my LJ (since ported to Dreamwidth of course) but I should try.
Anyway. wow. Blast from the past. Thanks for the rec!!!
Fic Post: The Honorable Siblinghood of Equipment Managers
So, uh. I finished the core draft of the sequel to Everything You Know, but it's not ready to post yet. Instead of returning to any of my in-progress WIPs, I... did this. Please enjoy the Honorable Siblinghood of Equipment Managers and Shane Hollander's Jockstrap of Theseus. Also a longer-than-necessary digression with Luca Haas, because I can.
In which Shane Hollander has the favour of the Honorable Siblinghood of Equipment Managers (or at least, the South-Eastern Canada regional meeting thereof) (5494 words) by ineptshieldmaid
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: OMC (Metros Equipment Manager), Shane Hollander, Dale | Ottawa Centaurs's Equipment Manager (Game Changers), Ilya Rozanov, Luca Haas
Additional Tags: outsider pov, shane hollander's jockstrap of Theseus, hockey superstitions and rituals, small magics, mentions of Gentle Walks With The Swiss
Summary:
The best players, Stefan's mentor had told him, are like racehorses: highly strung, and easily spooked. Hollander was the best of the best. And his career - the challenge of working with him and his particular routines - had elevated Stefan's standing in the Honorable Siblinghood, so it was as much professional debt as favouritism that had Stefan taking a particular interest in Hollander, by the time he came out to the locker room. Stefan expected to be working with him until one or other of them retired. […]
If, after that, Hollander's skate laces were replaced before they started to wear thin, and if the new laces passed through the hands of at least two fully-sworn Senior or Very Senior Equipment Managers before they met his skates, that was within Stefan's discretion. He never even spoke of it, directly, to his team.
One of my favorite things Harriet says throughout all Sayer's novels is this, when asked by Lord Peter if she thought life was worth living:
"I've always felt absolutely certain it was good--if only one could get it straightened out. I've hated almost everything that ever happened to me, but I knew all the time it was just things that were wrong, not everything. Even when I felt most awful I never thought of killing myself or wanting to die--only of somehow getting out of the mess and starting again."
when you remember you have thirteen thousand words of unfinished fanfic in your google docs and it’s good words and a good fic but it needs another thirteen thousand words to be finished and released into the world and you’re never gonna do that
I think Ilya has a little fantasy of being snuggled up on a couch with Shane under one arm and Sveta under the other watching a hockey game and listening to the two of them eviscerate the two teams. It's not even really sexual (although Shane and Svetlana are the two hottest people Ilya knows), its just if he could be one place at any given time with any given people it would be there with them.
Ilya playing 4-D chess with Svetlana because after the first time he watches a game with Yuna and David this fantasy expands: he wants Sveta with her feet in his lap, Shane under one arm, Yuna across from them and David next to her, the three Shane, Sveta and Yuna arguing about hockey while David and Ilya’s eyes meet and they understand each other on a soul frequency.
But obviously he can’t just drag Sveta, who’s mad at him for leaving Boston, to meet his boyfriend’s parents. And the rare time he has with Shane he doesn’t want to spend hosting, even if it is Sveta.
So it’s years down the line before this actually comes about. They’re at Ilya and Shane’s Ottawa home, it’s probably early season and he expects Yuna and Sveta to be on a tear about new rookies and these particular teams’ new strategies. They are, that part is true.
What he hasn’t counted on is Sveta’s thirsting over hockey players. Maybe he thought she might give it up, given she’s in the presence of Shane Hollander, but no. That goalie is aging well, this defenceman’s longer hair is really working for him, would you look at that smirk on that guy?
Ilya was not prepared for Shane to counter Sveta’s appraisal with “eh, he’s like a beefier version of Carter Vaughn with a busted nose and weaker slapshot”.
He was really not expecting Yuna to join in. That rising hotshot with dark eyebrows and a smoulder reminds her of a young Chris Chelios. Sveta is right about the goalie aging well but has she considered the coach? Yuna remembers him as a player, he was good on the ice but nothing exceptional to look at, but age and a stylish suit working out well for him.
So this is how Ilya ends up spending the intermission periods trapped between his best friend, his husband, and his mother-in-law, all rating the attractiveness of hockey players past and present.
At some point Yuna remembers that Ilya is attracted to men, and asks his opinion, and he has to admit that while he thinks some of Sveta’s preferences are weird, he’s never really been an ogler of hockey players. Well. Except one.
Ilya snugs his arm closer around Shane.
Yuna and David: *collective awww*
Shane, indignant: liar. You think Scott Hunter is hot. You thought he was hot when we were rookies, you hypocrite!
Sveta, who had noticed Ilya had a thing about Hunter but never got him to admit it: were you two meeting up and talking about hot boys? I’m jealous, Ilya. Sex with your rival is one thing but you’re supposed to talk to _me_ about boys!
Shane, forgetting his parents as the ghost of his jealousy is summoned: oh it was definitely a sex thing.
Ilya: I THINK THE GAME IS BACK ON
DAVID, a bit behind the conversation: I think Hunter has aged well. Or maybe coming out changed how he carries himself…
SHANE: Yeah you’re not wrong but I always thought, of the two of them, Vaughn is the more handsome, and he’s certainly no worse for wear…
Sveta high-fives Shane in agreement. Yuna realises she has always thought the same, and she’s missed out on decades of agreeing with Shane about this.
Ilya could have lived without knowing Shane’s opinions on their hottest colleagues and rivals, really.
Hi Balls, I was reading your essay post and I am interested by how you’re making fun of the AI generated story winning the literary prize and calling it nonsensical and pointing out meaningless sentences. I remember a few months ago you were calling some fans “losers” for making callout posts and blocklist for AI fic writers discovered on ao3? Is this a contradiction of your own opinion or did your stance change and you now agree that AI users should be named and shamed?
tldr: you are literally making my point for me.
I genuinely don't know how to say this without sounding patronising but, respectfully, the ‘explanation’ for why I hold both opinions at once—ie that the only thing more ridicuous than a clearly AI generated story winning the fucking Commonwealth Short Story Prize of all things is people’s reactions to the scandal, and that “fans” witchunting and harassing fellow fans over perceived AI usage on Ao3 need to get a fucking grip and sit on the naughty step for a while—can be easily sussed out if you spent some time thinking about it instead of trying to catch people out or whatever the fuck this is.
when it comes to, idk man, an AI generated Stucky coffee shop AU being posted on Ao3, there is no ‘injustice’ happening, no matter how emotively you frame it. because there are no stakes whatsoever: respectfully, please understand that the judging panel of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, ie one of the world’s most famous awards for short fiction that has launched the literary careers of multiple authors across the world, and the editorial board of Granta, one of the most prestigious Anglophone literary magazines, are not logging on to Ao3 and typing in Jungkook/Jimin Omegaverse Spitroasting (include tag: Breeding Kink) in search of the next Salman Rushdie (and I am saying this as someone who wrote queer theory piss fic).
the Commonwealth Prize case is not interesting to me because AI bad and human writing good. the interesting aspect is what the judges' failure to notice this story tells us about how writing gets evaluated by the institutions that hold power over which stories are told, and how. the harm is not "an AI wrote this” lmao it is "an institution responsible for certifying literary value demonstrated that its evaluation criteria for a specific writing tradition are so underspecified that they can be satisfied by outright pattern-matching." and this is actually exactly the point i am making about why it’s so fucking irritating to see losers (a term i stand by) publicising lists of fanfics and authors they have decided are ai generated.
anyway. being published on Ao3 is not exactly a marker of quality. anyone can publish on Ao3. i could photocopy a picture of my asshole, superimpose Fëanor’s face on it, claim it’s a representation of him in the Eternal Darkness, and then post it on Ao3 tomorrow. if the argument is that AI writing is ‘low quality slop that doesn’t belong in the archive’, then does that mean everything on Ao3 that is humanly written a ‘high quality’ literary masterpiece? does it mean that only works fitting a certain criteria, such as *checks notes* only three emdashes a page, ‘deserves’ to be published on Ao3?
with all due respect, no. just because someone wrote something does not mean the thing is (again I am speaking in terms of literary ‘quality’ as judged by competitions and tradpub etc rather than whether or not it appeals to people) worthy of commendation. also don’t even try with the ‘but the environmental/social impact of AI means people i decide have used AI MUST be harassed on tumblr’. are you weighing the moral positionality of every author you kudos? what if your all time favourite porno was written by someone who owns a real fur coat? what scale of morality are you using here, and why is the moral worth of another human being contingent upon what you think counts as AI or not AI?
anyway. when you post a fic on Ao3, you are participating in a community, not nominating your fic for the Booker Prize. and this is why fanfic is so diverse and fun and varied in style and form and all that. because most things appeal to someone or the other out there, even if your fic is just a description of Aragorn unbuckling his belt when someone asks him to choose between washing his hair or shitting in his hands and clapping. the whole point of it is that it is fun and not ruled by literary prize criteria. hence, even if someone did write an AI generated fic and posted it on Ao3, they are not exactly seeking a prestigious certification of literary capability and neither is Ao3 or its reader offering that. there is no institution here claiming authority to certify quality, no structural gatekeeping function, no literary tradition being characterised as imitable machinery by the people in power. Ao3 is an archive site. it operates outside literary legitimation because it does not claim to legitimise anything.
which leads to my next point:
bro why do you CARE 😭
like if I came across that shitting in his hands and clapping fic, I would just say ‘ew’ and scroll. If I came across a story I suspect to be AI generated, I would do the same thing. I have done this on countless occasions. I would not come onto another website and talk about how Author X should be beaten with hammers for her poop fic. or make a canva graphic of Author Y’s mdash usage? why would I do that when I could just use the time to find a fic I enjoy and read that instead?
if, like i said above, writing a fic and posting it is not a declaration of literary prowess or assumed quality and is simply the act of engaging with a community, then AI generated fics are, as much as you hate to see it that way, doing the same thing. the ‘writers’ are engaging with the community with their AI fic. and sure, this way of engagement may be dishonest and what not, but clearly some people enjoy them and have made them popular or whatever, in which case that is a back and forth engagement. is the argument here that a couple of these fics have gotten a lot of comments or whatever? are we pretending that kudos and comments are now the measure of a fic’s quality, instead of reflecting whatever the primary audience in that fandom prefers to read?
there is no prize denoting literary worth that is handed out by kudos or comments or being posted on Ao3, this is just someone reading something and going yeah, I like this. are you going to go hound everyone who commented ‘great fic’ on every single fic where Naruto “gets pegged—not with a plug but a finger—a quiet, thrumming evocation of the Sexy Jutsu on the tapestry of his pubes, floating on the grammar of his balls”??? this is a person in a community saying I enjoyed this; the lit prize is an institution exercising cultural authority in a way that dictates, to paraphrase Roy, which stories are told, by whom, and how. Ao3 is not doing that. Ao3 is doing the opposite of that. Ao3 says “the person into Aragorn shitting into his hands and clapping” can post whatever they want.
and like. again. what are you getting out of this? what is the end goal? to harass some twelve year old for writing and posting OCfic using ChatGPT? this shit is always framed through the lens of pedagogical care and “accountability” but what it actually is is just a pure flame war lol. what is the educational value of slagging off someone to the entire internet over a zero stakes situation with no payoff? what does such an action garner you aside from the chance to chest-thump about your own virtue?
and most importantly, what if you’re wrong?
and this is the point of all points lol, the one that overshadows all the others i’ve made so far: the fact that what I am saying in my commonwealth prize writeup isn’t a contradiction of me thinking people should not be conducting public witch hunts over fanfic, it actually proves the point i am making! because if these people, who are in terms of writing qualifications and academic background, ostensibly at the topmost layer of the literary world, who have read much much more in their fields than you or I, have, for free, offered us a box of popcorn and an enjoyable demonstration of a reading practice lazy enough to award a prestigious prize to an AI generated story, then what makes YOU so confident that your decision and subsequent public witchhunt is justified, that your eye for ‘real’ literature and hallmarks of LLM generated writing, aside from really puerile shit like ‘goody proctor used an emdash’, is somehow better, is somehow good enough to harass people over?
idk man. in my book, a bunch of knowitall chucklefucks harassing people in their own community based entirely on vibes and a sprinkle of ship wars (yeah you mfs think you’re slick don’t you 😭😭😭), leads to a far more toxic community than a handful of young or inexperienced writers using LLMs and what not.
what you are doing is encouraging a paranoid reading practice in your own community, the community you partake in for fun! and like… man this is the thing that actually gets me, the thing that ties all of this together so bleakly: the paranoid reading practice this attitude is spreading in fan communities, the gleefulness of the witch-hunt, the "I have identified the tells" confidence… this is, structurally speaking, the same operation as what the prize judges used, just pointed in the opposite direction.
the judges had a model of what Caribbean literary fiction is supposed to look like and matched the text against it without actually reading it closely or engaging with it. AI-vigilantes on Ao3 have a model of what AI writing is supposed to look like and they're matching texts against that without actually reading them either. both of you are reading for the shape of a thing rather than the thing itself. both of you are outsourcing any actual encounter with the text to a paranoid checklist. and both your guns, subsequently, will misfire with potentially horrible consequences.
and I think the reason I find it worth saying all of this in one breath, the Commonwealth Prize, the judges, Granta uploading the story to some AI to ask about its AIness, the reactionary discourse, and yes, the AO3 witch hunts too, is that ALL of these are varying results of the same root problem, which is that we have collectively gotten very bad at tolerating the uncertainty and discomfort that actual literary engagement requires.
actual reading requires you to accept not-knowing, to at least attempt to stay in the room with a story that isn't immediately yielding to what you are demanding from it instead of deciding that something you do not understand on first skim does not deserve categorisation as ‘real’, requires you to ask "is this doing something I can't yet follow" before you ask "is this doing nothing???”.
it’s an uncomfortable place to be and I understand why people reach for the checklist instead, whether the checklist is emdash counting or "this sounds like the thing I know” or “people from X ship always use AI”. but the cost of the checklist, the cost of this paranoid, mechanical, securitised and surveilled reading practice, is that you stop encountering writing on its own terms entirely. and at that point you're not reading, are you? you're just confirming what you already thought, and some poor writer somewhere, who might have made every decision in every sentence and could account for all of it, is getting caught in the net of your refusal to engage with uncertainty.
it all is just so fucking tragic man. like the intellectual honesty of going "I didn't understand this and I wonder why that is" seems to have been replaced by the comfortable "I didn't understand this and therefore it is bad/fake/not worth my time.” and what do you lose here? what is actively being destroyed? the possibility of a real, genuine encounter, the moment of encounter that reading fundamentally is, the experience of a text doing something to you that you weren't expecting it to do, that you didn't have a framework for and had to build one as you read. that experience requires vulnerability and an admission that your existing framework might be insufficient or at the very least not throwing your toys out of the pram the minute you find in a piece of writing something you consider morally wrong.
and yeah maybe you’re right lol. maybe i should be naming and shaming. so here you go: fuck a fanwriting culture that has entirely given up on the idea that reading is something a person can be wrong about in ways that should provoke curiosity, even if the result of that curiosity is just ‘tbh yeah this is bad writing’. but alas, apparently we have decided that it's more important to be confident about what you're reading than to actually read it and find out.
anyway these are my thoughts, and iirc @allthingswhumpyandangsty had some excellent thoughts on the matter too but i am too sleepie to find linkie.
I think this was the very good post by allthingswhumpyandangsty re why all of us should be minding our own damn business over our suspicions re whether or not a fic is AI written.
ermmmmmmm i think shane deserves to crash out...........
inspired by @cuppydogshane and @glorpus et al. everyone say yay we love the hollander family torture chamber!!!!!!
___
It's in typical Rose style that she, once again, shatters Shane's attempts at obfuscating an uncomfortable truth. "She actually said that? That they thought you might be gay and just, what, decided to let it be?" she cries through the phone speaker, sounding so scandalized that Shane grimaces.
He starts to pace across the grass outside his cottage where he and Ilya had kicked around the soccer ball earlier, an unserious bout of two-touch that neither of them really won. Ilya is no doubt still inside somewhere, dishing whole the sordid tale of their discovery to Svetlana in rapid-fire Russian like he had been when Rose called.
"I mean, yeah but - that's not a bad thing. I didn't want to come out yet. I didn't want this to be how I told them." The repeated words taste sour in his mouth. His mother's face comes back to the front of his mind when she saw Ilya step inside their home behind Shane. But you hate him. No. I mean, I get that, but no. I actually, uh... I love him. "I had a plan." Said plan having been to gently break the gay news to his parents sometime that year, and leave the Ilya stuff for later. Way later. As late as possible, preferrably.
"Shane. She told you to stop crying. When you were having like, a whole coming out moment, basically completely against your will." Rose almost sounds like she's begging him to understand, like it's painful for her to hear this, but Shane doesn't understand, not really. His mom has her way of looking after him, and this is how it works. She loves him. She protects him.
Uh... I'm sorry. Can we just sit down, please?
Shane groans. "That's not what I said. Don't say it like that. Like it's bad."
"Shane..." Her voice is softer now, like he's some wounded animal that needs soothing, and something acidic and hot burns inside him. "You got caught kissing the one guy you're not supposed to even be friends with, and she told you to stop crying and start brainstorming how to milk this for more brand deals."
"Jesus, Rose." He looks off into the distance, at the lake, at the ripples on the surface. Predictable movements that follow the wind no matter what. "My mom's just, she's better at that stuff. Business. I mean, she's dedicated her whole life to - to me. My career." Shane exhales harshly and shifts his grip on his phone. "The fallout will affect her too, if this gets out."
And do your teammates know?
One day they will. One day everyone that matters will know, and this secret, hidden weakness Shane has spent so long concealing will be another article, another podcast episode, another talk show discussion topic. The thought is lodged in his brain like a splinter. Always there, always aching. He tries not to touch it. The lake blurs and Shane turns away.
"Why didn't you just hire someone? You pay her, right? Or like, she gets a percentage or whatever?"
"What?" His voice cracks. Blood roars in his ears.
I mean, you never let him win, did you Shane?
Rose graciously lets the payment subject drop. There's a noise on the other end of the line, like shifting papers. "Why didn't you hire a professional manager?"
"My mom is a professional." Shane clears his throat.
I'm sorry that I made you feel like you couldn't tell me.
He can practically hear the look she's giving him. "Well duh, now she is. I meant from the beginning. Before you were drafted, sure, whatever, but after signing to Montreal, why wouldn't you hire someone with experience? Isn't it hard, with her... you know, being your mom?"
With her being a woman? With her being Japanese? Now it all matters? She's worked so hard. His whole life. Cutting his turkey sandwiches diagonally every time, not wearing perfume, removing the tags from all his clothes and hockey gear, adhering to his strict routines, driving him to practice, talking to his coaches, negotiating his contracts, taking over conversations with brand partners and executives when Shane can do little more than make his mouth smile for the cameras. Whatever he can do to make this all worth it will never be enough.
Shane is quiet, and Rose doesn't rush him. The papers shuffle again in his ear. Maybe a script for her next movie. He realizes distantly that he's stopped pacing.
Alright... okay. Okay. Okay, okay. Enough.
His free hand fidgets with the inside of his pocket. "I don't know," he finally murmurs. "I never thought about it. She's always just... even when I was a kid. If anyone picked on me, she would raise hell until something happened. She got me a written apology from somebody's parents once. My teachers always hated her," he says through a smile, despite the growing unease in his chest.
Alright, what's the plan?
Rose sighs. "I'm not saying she doesn't love you, Shane, but you have to admit, it's kind of fucked. What did your dad say?"
He scoffs. "'So there were no nice men in Montreal?'"
"Oh my god, what?"
"They're just worried! With the whole rivalry thing, and - it's not like he doesn't have a reputation. They just don't know him yet."
Which is true. Everyone thinks they've got Ilya Rozanov all figured out: a competitive asshole who thinks he's better than everyone else, on and off the ice, and doesn't care who knows it. A mouthy show-off who buys flashy cars to fuck every willing woman in North America inside and lives to irritate his numerous enemies.
Which... isn't wholly untrue. But Shane knows him better than that - knows Ilya, not just Rozanov, number 81. The Ilya that is sweet, funny, generous, considerate, and so loving sometimes it hurts. The self he hides. Like Shane hides.
"Well, yeah, I get that, but..."
"No," Shane disagrees. "You don't get it. It's complicated." He purses his lips, trying to think of the correct order of words, the logical impetus that will get her to understand. We need a statement prepared in case anything leaks. Something classy and simple. "My parents could only have one kid."
Silence.
Shit. Bad sign.
When Rose finally speaks, every word is slow, deliberate, and absolutely dripping with disbelief. "And that's your fault?"
Fuuuck. "No! That's not what I'm saying!" Shane manually unclenches his jaw and breathes deeply, like his mother taught him. "I'm just. Trying to be a good son, and I lied to them. I'm supposed to - this wasn't -"
There's a world of opportunity here, if they do it right.
"Wasn't part of the plan?" Rose offers.
Shane nods, which Rose can't even see. The words are getting harder to get out, and he wants to be done, but she called, and she's asking, and she cares, and it hurts. "Yeah."
"Getting caught or being gay?"
"...Both?"
"Jesus," she mutters. "Okay. Listen. I need to just say it. I'm telling you this as your friend. As someone who sincerely cares about you. Okay?"
"Okay...?"
He couldn't have prepared for her next words if he had a million years.
"No offense, but if your parents thought you might be gay, as a professional hockey player - a sport with no out players before Scott Hunter - and they didn't explicitly say something supportive about gay people in general to make sure their maybe gay son knew it was safe to come out to his parents, that is kind of fucked up, Shane! Like, so, they're happy to profit off you being a sexy hockey god - and go you, obviously - but it's too weird to, what, have a serious conversation about what it's like being maybe gay in a men's locker room, a notoriously homophobic and categorically evil place where basic human decency goes to die? But, again, it's toootally fine to rent you out to Rolex for commercials? Come on, Shane! You know that's fucked."
Shane is silent again. The flame inside him has turned to ice. There's Rose's voice, the biting cold in his core, and nothing else.
Rose gives him an endless ten seconds before continuing, a little less frantic now. Gentle, like a knife to his heart. "If you're gay now, you've been gay the whole time. In juniors. In fucking grade school. Right?"
The cold is radiating to his fingertips. There's buzzing. Cicadas?
"I talk to my brothers, Shane. I know things. I'm not in there with you, but I know enough, okay? The whole toxic masculinity thing is a thing. Jocks have a pecking order. There's always one guy getting hazed the most. Be honest with me. It was never you?"
Sorry, I don't drink. Non, merci. Bois tout! Okay, très bien, arrête. Tout le monde, regardez! Holl-an-der! Holl-an-der! Holl-an-der!
"Shane?"
Move, queer. Ugh, tapette! You fucking sissy bitch. Go home!
He's so cold. Shivering with it. When has summer ever been this freezing?
Mom, can you just take three steps back, please?
I ordered for you. Salmon, brown rice.
I'm sure you could have a glass of wine if that's what -
"I gotta go. Sorry."
"Shane, wait -"
He hangs up without another word and almost drops his phone with shaking fingers. He'll apologize later, when he comes back, but Shane is gone. He's far away. In a locker room, in his parent's house, in countless hotels, dizzy in a bathroom stall with his head between his knees and trying so hard to catch his breath but he just can't. He can't.
He's still somewhere else when Ilya comes bounding out the back door, practically glowing from his conversation with his beloved Svetlana, ready to tell Shane all about her newest client's fuck-ugly haircut and how she's sending them an expensive present she refused to tell Ilya the nature of. His pace stalls for just a second of hesitation and the smile falls from Ilya's face when he sees Shane, rooted to the spot and pale, before rushing to him.
"Shane. What is it?" Ilya's face is a mask of worry, a mirror image of when he had comforted Shane after David's abrupt arrival and departure earlier in the day. Warm hands come up to rub Shane's biceps up and down, and he is back inside his body. Barely, but he is.
"I'm okay," he says automatically, blinking hard.
"You are shaking." Ilya is trying to catch his eye, but Shane can't hold his gaze. He tries to aim at least in the direction of Ilya's face, he knows he's supposed to. Look me in the eyes when I'm talking to you, Hollander.
"I'll be alright." I can be okay. I can reel it in. I can control myself. I can do it right. Just give me a minute. A second. One more chance.
"Shane," Ilya pleads, and he looks so concerned, fuck. Shane can't look.
He closes his eyes. Breathes as best he can. Why is it so fucking hard?
Ilya keeps a gentle hold on his upper arms, trying to steady him, thumbs moving up and down the same way they do over the back of Shane's hands when Ilya is clutching them like he'll never get enough of touching Shane. Shane grabs the waistband at Ilya's hips like a lifeline. They breathe together, Shane trying to follow Ilya's slow and even example. Shane leans into Ilya's chest fully and those beautiful arms surround him and finally, finally, the merciless cold begins to dissipate. For a perfect second, nothing else exists but them. Ilya whispers into his hair, "There. Okay. Shh. Малышка."
Then Shane, to his own shock and horror, starts fucking crying.
He cries so hard and for so long there's a big wet spot on Ilya's shirt afterwards, but he doesn't have room to care right now. Ilya holds him the entire time and even follows him to the ground when Shane's legs give out. They nearly collapse into the grass together, but Ilya maneuvers at the last second to take most of Shane's weight to his chest so he doesn't go down knees-first.
Yeah, his ribs will feel that tomorrow. It doesn't matter. It wouldn't even if it should.
"It's okay, we'll figure it out," he says with a lot more conviction than he actually feels, but that's nothing new for Ilya. Shane makes a strangled noise that Ilya takes to mean no, actually, nothing will ever be okay again, and smashes his face harder into Ilya's chest. He's halfway in Ilya's lap, gripping his belt loops for dear life and Ilya really wishes he knew what the fuck was happening. He can't imagine Rose was unhappy with the news. From everything Shane has told him, she seems like a good friend. Thank God. Shane needs more of those.
Ilya holds him tighter. Okay, so that can't be it. Whatever put that faraway, empty look in Shane's eyes that Ilya saw when he came outside had to be something truly terrible. Ilya feels a little sick with the thought. "Shane, please tell me. Whatever is wrong, we can fix it. I will fix it." His only answer is a bite to the chest and another heaving sob. "Fuck. Okay," Ilya breathes, and makes peace with it. "Я рядом. It's okay. Hollander, breathe."
Shane wants to call his mom. He wants to scream. He wants to throw something fragile and watch it shatter. Instead, he puts his hands over his ears and Ilya cups them with his own. Shane isn't sure which of them is rocking them back and forth, but it's soothing nonetheless, and he doesn't have the energy to worry about it right now. The buzzing is finally subsiding, and his fingertips and face are tingling with numbness. "Sorry I bit you," he mumbles to Ilya's tits. He sneaks an arm between them and runs his fingers over the spot. Wet. Ew.
Ilya snorts. "Is nothing new." He's still practically crushing Shane against his chest, and the proximity is comforting, even though the awkward position of Shane's legs is starting to bother him. "Less kinky than last time, though."
"Shut up." Shane's lips twitch and he opens his eyes to glare at Ilya. It is not menacing. Ilya kisses his forehead as a reponse.
Shane feels wrung out. He doesn't even know where to begin unpacking what the fuck just happened, and he doesn't want to. He actually needs to put it all back where it came from. However, the idea of Ilya letting it go seems far-fetched, and... they promised to be honest, for at least the next two weeks. Shane had made them promise. Ilya is still searching his face, brows scrunched with worry.
Shane pats his hip with the arm still smushed to his side. "We can talk about it later, okay?" he finally offers. "I need to text Rose and tell her I'm sorry. I hung up on her."
Ilya's expression turns from worry to mean in a second. "She hurt you?"
"No." Shane shakes his head and sniffles. "Well... not her. She was trying to help." He rubs his eyes again. They sting.
"Help," Ilya repeats with a raised brow. "By making you cry like this?"
"Sometimes it's like that," is all Shane can think to say.
Ilya looks to be seriously considering it. He nods faintly and loosens his hold on Shane, who gratefully unsticks himself from Ilya's soaked shirt and wipes his face. "Fuck. Sorry." He frowns at the wet spot and pulls it away from Ilya's skin with pinched fingers.
Ilya rolls his eyes dramatically and adjusts his position to prop himself up on one arm. The ground is hurting his ass. "Yes Shane, you have ruined my shirt forever with your tears. They will never wash out, and I will forever have big stain on this black shirt, and everywhere I go they will ask me, Ilya, what happened to -"
"Fuck you!" Shane squawks, but he's grinning, and Ilya is grinning back, and the world feels like it's on the right axis again. He leans against Ilya's thigh and they're kissing, Ilya's free hand on his jaw in that possessive way Shane can't get enough of, and maybe it really will be okay. Eventually.
I saw a post earlier about "women's spaces" and how the writer had often experienced them as hostile rather than inherently safe and welcoming and therefore precious. Now, I could relate to that to some degree, as I still tend to start off pretty tense at events for, say, queer women even though I now go quite a lot of them: "hello I'm bi! If anyone's going to have a problem with that it would be nice to get it out of the way immediately!" But I do value some women's spaces. I would be sad if gendered loos, for instance, went away completely. I've had mad, intense conversations in women's loos that I do not think would have happened in an evenly mixed setting. I have experienced the Drunk Girl Oracle who exists nowhere but in the queue for the ladies: I want her habitat to continue to exist.
But the thing is: no "women's space" I've ever been in has ever been this inviolate grove of Artemis where no man may set foot without getting turned into a fucking stag.
Trans women are women. Trans women belong in women's spaces. Trans women make me feel not less but more safe in women's spaces, for reasons that will become clear. When transphobes are screaming that the sky will and does fall in whenever a trans woman walks into a women's bathroom, of course I argue from that starting point.
But also I think it's worth examining the entire premise that spaces FOR [this type of person] are inherently spaces from which [that type of person] is banned.
So like, where are these women's spaces that don't come with the common-sense understanding that while usually, mostly you won't see men in there, if you do he's probably got reasons and its fine?
Is no one else seeing those signs that say "these premises are cleaned by male and female staff"? What about dads with small daughters? Is it really that bad if a man just plain gets lost or has one shot to avoid an emergency from time to time?
There was this meetup for bi people I used to go to. But of course there were never only bi people there. People brought along friends and partners who might be straight or gay. And oh-shit-it-turns-out-I'm-bi people who were still identifying as gay in the rest of their lives came on the quiet. And there was this one lesbian who -- ironically given a certain slur the GC crowd like to throw at bi women -- came quite unapologetically as a tourist, to observe our strange ways and, as she put it, to "encourage us."
These people were explicitly welcome. It was not a space from which not-bi people were barred. It was still a bi meetup. It was still a "bi space."
I was at a sapphics' club night last Friday. And there were some men there. I mean, apparently cis, entirely male-presenting, gender-conforming men in the Women's Space™ . Some of them were bar staff, for starters. Is that OK with the GCs? Does all the terror and horror and loss at the thought of a man in your precious Women's Space go away if the man's being paid? If so, it seems oddly ... conditional. But also some of them some seemed not to be working but just sort of ... there. Maybe they were somebody's friends? They certainly didn't bother anyone. I didn't see where they ended up. You see, I was mainly focused on the hot chicks.
There's another wlw event I go to, to which a guy regularly shows up and we've chatted a few times. He usually wears what you'd conventionally call "women's clothes" but does not present as a woman. I know he uses he/him pronouns at present, (I asked) though he implied there was some possibility that might change. I don't know if he's a regular because he's a friend of the host or if he's a friend of the host because he's a regular. I don't know if something about the wlw label speaks to him on some personal level or if it's about queer solidarity, or if he's like the encouraging lesbian at the bi meetups. Whatever the reason, he's just there.
And aside from the fact that we have similar taste in hats, his presence in ye olde sapphic space also makes me feel more safe, for much the same reason the presence of a woman I know is trans does. I'm afraid it's selfish. Because if everyone's being cool about him, or about her, I can be pretty confident no one who finds out that I, too, disrupt binaries just by existing, is going to decide to ruin the evening over it. Because, you know, that has happened to me.
Now like I say, Actual Men in women's spaces aren't the reason trans women belong in women's spaces. But Actual Men entering women's spaces and not thereby ruining them forever do illustrate the utter pointlessness of thinking of women's spaces as these high-walled fortresses to begin with. Spaces for [a type of person] can exist, and still be porous. In fact, to be healthy and functional, they have to be.
Hey, man, c'mere. Listen. Get in real close, this is important.
You're gonna make stuff again. You're gonna make stuff you're proud of. You're gonna make stuff you're excited to share. You're going to feel that overwhelming drive to create, not just the frantic I want to want to you're stuck in now. You're going to have awesome ideas, and you're going to make them into reality. You're going to create again. You're still an artist. You're still a writer. You're still home to the same passion you had before. You'll find it again. It's not gone. It's just resting. Let it rest. You're going to make stuff again. I promise.
The thing about ADHD is that the "lack of reward chemicals in your brain" doesn't just mean that you don't want to do any tasks that don't feel particularly yummy :(, it means that your brain will look at chores and tasks that need to be done like "doing this would be painful and tedious for absolutely nothing to gain from it, Do Not Do That." The same thing that your brain tells you about everything else that would feel really bad and hurt the entire time that you're dying. The part of your brain that stops you from doing the thing is the same part that keeps you from shoving your arm into a wood chipper.
With unmedicated, unmanaged ADHD, "I have to do this assignment or I fail and my life will be ruined and I die" feels like a SAW trap, every single time.
Articles written by neurotypicals will be like “ADHD children find the external motivation of the SAW traps is very effective. Here’s how to build SAW traps to maximize their productivity.”
And then you wind up with impulsivity, and sometimes have to fight intrusive thoughts and urges to do things like, say, shove your arm into a woodchipper.
I wonder if that's related. Like, I'm constantly being forced to do things my brain has identified as hazardous. Weird that my brain sometimes despairingly suggests I do things that are definitely hazardous, after all that conditioning... what's the worst that could happen?
Crossing things off the to-do list sometimes feels about the same as stubbing your toe so honestly why the fuck not try something different!
The rational part of my brain has thusfar managed to keep me from slamming my car into a concrete abutment every time the other bit of my brain has suggested it, but it has not managed to make to-do lists legal again yet.
Ilya, some indeterminate time in the future, chasing after their toddler whose instinct is to do a runner the moment everyone starts standing too long, thus perfecting the Hollander Goodbye early: wow…genetic
it turns out I WAS RIGHT about my great-grandfather's wife's name.
I can't really fault my dad's cousin for having forgotten it, however, given that she was 1) not actually related to him (he shared my dad's other set of grandparents), and perhaps more relevantly, 2) died in 1963. He was working off memory and zero notice to recollect himself; my mother however of course has a file at home of all the geneaology we were able to do on that side of the family.
so this past weekend my oldest nephew had a party to celebrate his graduation from high school. i know, i feel really old. my older sister's less than two years older than me, so.
her son is giant. and is going to some school for some kind of engineering. he has despite all odds (i kid) turned out reasonably well-mannered, and his tendency to think of himself as smarter than everyone else is at least sometimes borne out nowadays (when he was eight it was cute but also very annoying, as he would do something mischievious and then totally fail to cover his tracks and then be completely astonished when he was immediately found out. now he has learned that if he's totally honest with his parents about where he's going and who with, he can get away with doing all kinds of insane and stupid shit while he's there, as long as he wasn't lying. i mean, he's not wrong.)
my sister has more gray hair than me, perhaps unsurprisingly.
anyway i drove down with dude, and then he drove home alone and i rode back up to the farm with mom and middle-little sister. so it was logistically mildly complicated, but not terrible. we live in a big roughly equilateral triangle with 300 miles on each side, more or less, so it's not convenient but it's a damn sight better when oldest sister lived in fucking Georgia, so i'll take it.
anyway, Sister had sent out an email to a collection of family and friends, saying she wanted to compile a kind of scrapbook of advice and support to send her oldest darling baby off into the world with, and a funny assortment of people replied. Some of them are people who haven't been in super close contact throughout this child's life, due to, well, among other things, the Georgia I mentioned; it's been geographically kind of a lot, at times.
We were all bustling around doing things to prep for this party, and my oldest sister brought an armload of scrapbook supplies and the little blank book over to me, and asked if I could just-- start the scrapbooking part of it, because she had a vague notion, and the things necessary, but no time to sit and do it and no creative vision. I've never really scrapbooked, but I figured I could do this.
so I did, but as I was working, I was reading out various of the things. One letter in particular, we were discussing-- from an uncle of mine, who has been in a weird isolation from the rest of the family for about the last 30 years because he's in a bizarre codependent abusive relationship. My niece was present and wrinkled up her nose and said, "Who???"
and I realized my nephew is going to struggle with knowing who some of these people are, also.
So I decided to make a quick little family tree and put it in the back of the book, just so he could know who some of these people are.
I wound up having to go five generations back in order to get everyone in. Because my father's first cousin sent a letter, and in it, he mentioned his not-grandparents-- my dad's grandparents on the other side from the ones this cousin had been descended from had been involved in his childhood, because his father had died so he'd sort of been absorbed into my dad's family. So I had to include them, but I also had to include his grandparents, if I was going to explain who he was. And I know the nephew knows the guy, and his kids, because they've spent time together. But I also know for a definite fact he had no idea who the guy actually was.
So it took me a couple of hours to work out a genealogy chart that actually included everyone and also fit onto a single page. And it was a fun exercise, and then it was useful because also, one of my first cousins came (she lives about an hour and a half away from older sister), and brought her kids, and explaining what their actual relationship was to Nephew (second cousins, as she's his first cousin once removed, being his mother's first cousin) was fun and also they had a great time looking at the chart.
Also two of my aunt's sons, so, my first cousins, and also my nephew's first cousins once removed, had sent advice, which is fantastic because they're Norwegian, and one of them sent a stanza of a saga in the original Old Norse, and it's utterly bizarre and makes no sense unless you know who this man is.
But I couldn't make the genealogy chart comprehensive. There wasn't room for my late aunt's children and their children, who I felt I could omit because they hadn't written back (and didn't attend our father's funeral so we've got a kind of half-decade-long one-sided beef with them, which we all overcame to attend their mother's funeral but they've clearly succumbed to the mindset that nobody not on Long Island really exists, which is the sort of thing that happens to you when you've lived on Long Island your whole life), and there wasn't room for the weird reclusive uncle's second wife and adopted daughter and her son (which I also didn't feel that bad about, as she hadn't written and ALSO didn't invite any of us first cousins to her wedding COME ON why have a wedding if not to do stupid family reunion bullshit at it????? her older sister did us all a solid by getting married twice and inviting us both times, I defintely thanked her for that) (IIIIII blame Long Islanditis for this one too)
and i had zero room for any of Nephew's father's family at all. But like, only his grandmother and uncle from that side had written anyway, so.
I made notes to both effects, and presented this booklet to him. I feel like footnotes and reference charts are important for all family documents.
and really. how blessed is this child, to have contact with enough of his family that i needed a five-generation-deep chart to explain who the people offering him support all were???
it's not nothing, anyway.
my dad would have been pleased, as those are his people.
he was very close to this nephew, and taught him all about cars and welding, two things he is planning to continue his study of. so. i feel like it was meaningful.
my people don't do ancestor veneration but it felt useful anyway, to make a chart.
we did call my father's cousin to ask him what his grandmother's first name was. we are ninety percent certain he misremembers the name of the other grandma, the one he wasn't descended from; he thinks it was the same as my older sister's name, which isn't possible, because there was mild disagreement by my parents over naming her, which would not have happened if it was an ancestal name. and my cousin went to ireland and saw the home of this great-grandmother, and agrees with me that her name was something else, a name i remember my father telling me. so my chart might be inaccurate but at least i tried. i can't ask Dad! Mom has it written down somewhere at home and will look it up for me. we have a photo of this woman, it's not that long ago.
anyway. ancestors. deep thoughts. i'm so goddamned tired. whew.
It made my Mom (a historian, whose current project is transcribing the death records of my native city; she's at 1859 right now) point out, though, that she's never understood why so many organizations (like the DAR) always take death records as gospel truth. Because, as she pointed out, very often the family member present to fill out the certificate is a grandchild of the decedent. and while they surely knew the person, in some cases distantly but in many cases very very well, they very likely never called them by their full name in life, and so may not actually know their real given name, or their full maiden name, or details like that. A woman who has spent her entire life interacting with you as "Grandma", and you, distraught, are called upon for her birth name? Many people, even ones with good memories, may not know it.
(Tiny history PSA: Do you know your grandparents' names? Do you know what their occupations were? Are they alive? Maybe go ask them sometime! Are they dead? Ask your parents! It's such an easy, comprehensive, vivid window into recent history. I love the polls that go around on this site asking about your great-grandparents etc. Find the oldest person in your family and ask them to tell you everything they know about the oldest relative they remember, and you can get a surprising distance into the past. But understand: they may not be correct. It's very easy to mix up a detail like a name or even a country of origin. So take it as a starting point, but understand that a true primary source is something that was recorded not only by a direct witness, but at the actual time of the event, because memory is very easy to distort.)
One of the beats I really miss from the books is how obsessed Ilya gets over going to Shane's apartment/cottage/house because Shane keeps Ilya so compartmentalized and Ilya knows this. Shane's been to Ilya penthouse for years before Ilya gets to peek into a private Hollander residence
sometimes i think about how troy is so much like shane. the same obsessiveness. hockey as the axis his whole life turns on, the food rituals, the precision of it & his health (salmon is a treat for him...). the same social unawareness, the awkwardness, the anxiety, the unblinking seriousness. the way he moves through the world slightly out of sync, like he’s still learning rules everyone else already knows. he’s like shane, just slightly to the left. shane, but if he were drowning. shane, but if he had all the same rocks in his pockets that ilya carried for years. the family or lack thereof, the secrecy, the loneliness, & the quiet, constant self-erasure.
so fucking of course it’s ilya who sees it immediately. he sees shane in him, and he sees himself, too—the version of himself that existed before shane loved him. and loving troy, helping him, feels almost like having a piece of hollander there. something steady and familiar in his hands, even when shane is weeks and cities away (and ilya is so secretly miserable he could scream). of fucking course ilya is the one who reaches for him first, clings to him really, & refuses to let him drown, when no one else sees it or is brave enough to help him
ilya and shane invented love so completely it spills out of them and saves other people. god whatever
Okay but then: as Ilya is furiously wingman-ing for Troy, nudging him toward Harris, does that cut him too? Harris is a bundle of sunshine (Ilya doesn’t know Harris anxieties or complex medical history), and a bundle of sunshine is what Troy, who is very much like Shane, needs.
And meanwhile Shane has Ilya, who has a well of darkness inside him that he can’t let Shane see or be sucked into.
