Online spaces have almost always been where asexual and aromantic people meet each other and organize. This is why the major online campaigns against us around ten years ago were so destructive.
Itâs easy to say that cyber bullying doesnât matter in the real world or whatever but targeted online bullying campaigns have the power to wreck entire communities and support networks.
Itâs difficult to just turn off your computer when all the people who relate to this aspect of your life are in there.
Iâve definitely met other asexual and arospec people irl but itâs quite rare. And real life queer spaces are in fact often bars or kink spaces. And like bully for you if you like kink or alcohol or romance but when your entire identity is based around not feeling the feelings often associated with romance and/or sex thatâs not always super fun.
And people got relentlessly mocked for bringing up this issue. Shut down. Called childish. Like okay. Fuck us for wanting a sober non sexual spot to meet other queers, right? So childish for wanting options.
Iâve been involved in the online asexual community and doing education about asexuality and aromanticism in both irl and online queer spaces for almost fourteen years now and that short period of time around 2016-2018 took a wrecking ball to my people that I feel like weâve still barely recovered from and Iâm still angry about it.
I think asexual pirates should come back. This time theyâre here for your ass. And not sexually.
"they made the brig a cyberman" girl, they made the brig the cyberman who couldn't be converted!!! all the speeches and tears about danny all that love is not an emotion love is a promise and he will NEVER hurt her and then the clouds disperse and they turn around and there is the brigadier and the daughter he saved. all those years after nicholas courtney died and they paid tribute to him and his characterâthe longest-spanning character besides the doctor and the master btwâin such an astonishingly beautiful way
part of the charm of unit was this idea that it wasn't just the doctor on his own anymore. that he could go off and visit other worlds and other galaxies and frolick about through the universe to his heart's content and there would always be another line of defence on earth. unit is the representation of the people who volunteer to save the world, and the brig is the representation of unit.
and then here and now, in the present, the dead are rising against the living and there's this sense of terrible dread because the living are hopelessly outnumbered and of course they have to keep that suspense until the threat is over.
but then they bring out the brig and they say to the audience, they say look. look at this man. even at the darkest moment of this story, there was hope, and hope was this man. because even among that great and terrible army of the dead, there were ones like this man, who resisted the call, who made the other choice. who protected humanity.
the doctor looks at him and says earth's darkest hour, and mine. where else would you be? because all those times the earth didn't have the doctor, it had the brigadier.
some people see cyberbrig as a betrayal of the man. i think there can be no higher commendation.
the thing abt heaven sent is that like. everyone knows itâs 4.5 billion years but truly itâs four point five billion years. like. my entire lifespan is nothing in comparison to that. every day clara could ever have lived is completely eclipsed. thatâs longer than a time lord lifespan, which could theoretically be something like 15,000 years. that is literally nothing!!!! nothing!!!!!!!!! in comparison. thatâs three thousand lifetimes for a long lived time lord. thatâs nearly 600,000 of a human lifetime. if we assume clara was 29 when she died then thatâs 1.5 billion times claraâs entire life. 4.5 billion years is approximately the age of our fucking planet!!!!! i think the number is like. too big to properly process. the doctor lived the current lifespan of our planet to have the smallest chance at saving clara oswald. jesus christ dude.
what really fucks me up about watching the truman show in 2025 is how it's not fictional. truman is fictional, but the truman show isn't.
there's thousands of truman shows. you find them on youtube, tiktok, instagram... family and mommy vloggers, sad beige moms and now the trend of neglectful moms showing the "reality" of parenting. all of them using their kids for entertainment. each child their own truman; living a life manufactured by their parents, a camera watching their every moment, broadcasted for the entire world to see.
Imagine being Nyssa and spending a whole season with a woman u have a tremendous crush on whoâs made it your whole teams sole objective to get to this oh so mysterious and anticipating place on earth she wonât ever shut up about and then when you finally arrive you look around and see that itâs the concrete slob of Heathrow airport damn Iâd leave her ass there too
#does nyssa understand what tegan wanted to go to heathrow FOR#afterwards is she there all tactful like heathrow was very nice tegan#it was a very interesting place#and tegan's inwardly like wow i can't believe she thought heathrow was interesting#i'd better play along so she won't be embarrassed#and it would go on like that (via @penny-anna
You guys need to recognize that the push to treat ace and aro discourse as stupid infighting that never left tumblr is indeed a manifestation of the continued erasure and devaluing of asexuality, aromanticism, and and ace and aro lives in an effort to pretend that the people who did it weren't part of a reactionary hate movement that completely decimated two entire marginalized communities both on and offline.
Like I try to be nice about this but I have seen SO many fucking people being like "lol yeah ace/aro discourse was one thing" and that is deliberate erasure of real and important queer history in service of dodging blame on the parties that did this who, for the most part, never fucking apologized or owned up to it, or, in the case of a few blogs I still see going around, clearly still stand by all of it and just hope you don't point that out, and ofc, no one ever fucking does.
Stop downplaying the absolute fucking devastation the queer community did to ace and aro people and our communities. If owning it makes you uncomfortable, good, go make it right, and start by not fucking lying about what happened, thanks.
I do want to say if you got caught up in this I don't hate you, especially if you learned and changed, because like most reactionary hate movements ace/aro discourse was always presented as righteous and fun, and also it was EVERYWHERE and the people stirring shit were very well articulated. A lot of us were teenagers joining queer spaces for the first time ever and we wanted to belong and sometimes that means hating who the people who already belong tell you to hate. I get why people fell for it, I came close a few times myself when I was at my lowest and most desperate to feel like I belonged again. I get it.
I can't offer forgiveness or absolution to everyone, but you don't need me to forgive you to forgive yourself and move on, and I do think most of the people who got caught up in it have more than earned moving on.
However, what I want is for everyone to stop downplaying it. Don't call it stupid infighting, don't go "ace stuff was one thing but this with trans men is too far" don't claim it didn't leave tumblr or the internet, own how bad it was. If you were there you know, and your history is valuable, so even when it sucks please be honest about what happened. This part of queer history should not be forgotten, and especially not for the people who never really changed and have an interest in making sure everyone thinks this was just some silly infighting.
That's what I ask, do right by us, don't let us be erased again.
Especially because when you forget, when you downplay it, you downplay what's happened with truscum shit, with biphobia, and now with trans masc exclusion. You downplay it and you disguise that it's the same people saying the same things about a new group. I found out about the rise in trans man/masc exclusion because I saw someone saying that trans men are collateral damage secondary to the real targets of transphobia, trans women, and I immediately knew the person saying it was a shithead I should NEVER trust because that is exactly what they said about bi and ace and aro people. Word for word.
You do those who were hurt a disservice when you downplay what happened, but you also make our spaces less safe because if we pretend what happened didn't we can't stop it when it starts again.
Reblogging again after seeing YET ANOTHER person say ace/aro discourse wasn't mainstream and didn't leave the internet. People got kicked out of irl queer spaces behind this, stop fucking lying about what happened. At this point more someone pushes the "ace/aro discourse was bad but not mainstream/offline/as bad as what's happening now with [xyz group]" the more I think you have a vested interest in making it out to be not a big deal and that doesn't say anything good about you.
Like y'all claim to be against oppression olympics, but you're still engaging with it every single time you say anything even remotely like "ace/aro discourse was really bad but nothing as serious as what's happening now" and I'm sick of pretending it's not oppression olympics and also not a manifestation of the continued violence against ace and aro people. If the only way you're going to talk about what happened is through downplaying our suffering and/or spreading misinformation about it, do me and every other aro and ace person a favor and stop fucking talking about us.
I do really think that Ilya kind of has no idea how famous Shane is in Montreal until theyâre outed. Like, they go to visit the Pikes and decide to play tourist, so Shane kind of gives him the tour. He has a favourite bakery and a favourite cafe and he knows Ilya is gonna fucking love the orange julep.
And like, Ilya expected them to get stopped a little. He got recognized and stopped in Boston. But he wasnât expecting to be recorded pretty much all day. Photos, video, the second anyone recognizes them - and everyone recognizes them - phones are out. Shane is repeatedly apologized to and told not to pay for a single thing all day. He leaves like a 300% tip on each of their purchases, but still. No one will let him pay for anything.
And everyone wants a picture. People are not shy about coming to him and asking for a picture or an autograph and Shane just - gives them whatever they want. Grown adults, teenagers, parents with small children⊠Shane and Ilya take a photo with each of the business owners to hang on their wall. The owner of the cafe almost cries when she sees him and gives him a big hug. She doesnât need to ask for his order; she remembers it and she gives him a special energy breakfast ball thing sheâs been perfecting with him in mind.
The bakery made his favourite cookie in the approximate shape and size of a puck because they heard he was in town and hoped heâd swing by.
âHollander, you own a bar here?â
âUh, nope, they just⊠changed it after I left. Used to be called Chez Serge. Hayden told me thereâs a winebar called 2481 in the village now. Or maybe Saint Henri? I canât remember.â
Itâs fucking insane. And Ilya knew it was insane, but this⊠this is actually fucking crazy.
The only place that isnât quite so bad is Schwartzâs. And after Ilya gets over the fact that Shane used to come here alone late sometimes (smoked meat sandwiches are NOT team dietician approved), he boggles over Shane having a casual chat with the guy making their sandwiches. Itâs 11:30 at night. Thereâs a photo of Shane and this guy on the wall, and Shaneâs grinning widely with two thumbs up because he is a dork. âHey Ilya, câmere I want you to meet someone.â
They get bagels after. They just - drive to the bagel place that is open 24h, get a dozen, take yet another photo, and pick at them on the way back to Pikeâs. Theyâre so fresh theyâre still steaming.
Ilya looks at Shane from across the console. Heâs been doing this the whole time? Even with the added pressure of their whole thing before it was a thing? Christ. âIt was always like this?â
Shane shrugs. âI mean, not always. This was pretty bad, but it was like this every year we made the playoffs. It was similar on years we didnât do as well, just a little less, you know? I could at least go places without being stopped all the time. Iâd still be filmed, but I think people were less proud to be seen with me? So less pictures with fans. But during the playoffs? Yeah, always like this. Why? It had to be similar for you in Boston.â
âAh, no, Hollander. This is fucking crazy.â
âYeah,â Shane shrugs. âMetros fans are passionate. The worst were the game day look paps. I always failed miserably at those.â
We don't talk enough about the fact that Amelia Pond, s5 Amelia Pond, before the timeline is reset, isn't just a normal orphan. Her parents didn't die, didn't abandon her, and didn't send her away. They never existed in the first place.
And if her parents never existed, then Amelia cannot exist. She is a causal impossibility.
"People fall out of the world sometimes, but they always leave traces." A photograph. A face carved into an apple. Yes. Sure.
A child.
Now that's too big, surely.
But that's what she is. She is exactly the same as these things. A trace. An echo of something that could never be, never was, never could have been.
And the universe should never allow it. A whole person, that's just too much. She could not have continued to exist indefinitely, in normal circumstances, after her parents never existed.
In normal circumstances.
Because the Doctor didn't just save her from things coming out of the crack in her wall. He saved her from going into it. And he didn't just save her from the threat of going into it simply because of its vicinity.
No, by arriving when he did, he interrupted a process that was probably already in motion. And then by arriving again only moments later on a cosmic relative timestream (too quickly for the process to complete) and yet in the local relative timestream, years later --- years of a potential future caught midway through the process of rewriting -- he solidified that existence. Amy is a creature from another timeline, caught in amber. The Doctor prevented her from never existing, but only after she could already never exist.
And so, no one around Amelia thinks about it. Neither does she. There's some kind of consciousness block, because if you thought about it, really thought about it, for two seconds you'd realize she cannot exist. And the human mind can't deal with that. So, to protect itself, everyone's brain simply slides off it before ever noticing. They just assume that her existence makes sense, and don't question it, and don't notice what they don't question, that is staring them in the face.
But of course, to some extent they do notice. They can't think it, but they notice subconsciously that there's something they can't think. They notice there's something wrong with her, something uncanny. And they don't like it, and they alienate her even more because of it.
"Does it ever bother you Pond that your life existence doesn't make any sense?"
For some reason -- work or finances or maybe even simply pity -- a family moves down from Inverness to Leadworth. They move in with Tabetha's sister Sharon, who is an indefinably sad woman who lives alone in a house too big for her (although perhaps, in another universe, she too had a family [how long has this been going on?]) and is more than happy to welcome them into her echoing void. Or perhaps she only claims this, perhaps she does it out of obligation and expectation. This doesn't matter.
The child hates it, of course. She hates everything about it, but above all she hates the emptiness. The absence. And...the crack. The crack in the wall of the room they've given her to sleep in, a room which has always been empty but which they know on some level is a child's bedroom. It terrifies her. It whispers and it eats, she knows it does, although she isn't sure what that means. Did she really move in with so few toys?
Oh well, it's christmas soon so she gets new ones. And on it goes. She begs to be given a different room but her parents laugh and say that's silly. They've already set up her things. She'll get used to it. Adjustment is difficult but she'd feel the same in any other room.
And on it goes. And the crack whispers, and eats, and eats, and eats.
It's easter and her mum is putting her to bed. The crack is worse than usual somehow, glowing almost, and the fear she feels is tangible. "Don't be silly dear" her mum says, as she has said a million times, "it's just an ordinary crack. I'll prove it, see?" And she walks up to it and touches it.
It's easter and her da is putting her to bed. She doesn't have a mum, never has. This is normal, and mundane, that she has somehow been born without one. It doesn't even occur to her to think about, why should it? But fear and loss course through her. The source of the loss is implacable, but the fear is not. "The crack..." she murmers, drawing her covers to her chin. Her da laughs. "Oh Amelia, not that again! It's only a crack in the drywall. See?" And he walks up to it and touches it.
It's easter and Amelia is putting herself to bed. She doesn't have parents, never has. This is normal, and mundane, and not worth a thought, that she has somehow been born without them. But tonight the crack in her wall leers at her, and she feels even more scared of it than usual. She can't sleep. She feels like something horrible has just happened, although she doesn't know what it could be, and something still more horrible is coming. Something like death, but more so.
She gets out of bed and sits down again on top of it, as far from the crack as possible.
She doesn't normally pray, and isn't quite sure where to begin. But something about the night seems to call for it. "Dear Santa..." she begins.
additionally, a part of amys story that really lingers with me is that she remembers this all in season 6. when the timeline is reset, when she lived a whole life with a mum and a dad and a safe home, she also didn't, because she rembers it both ways. and at her wedding in the 'normal' timeline, when she demands the doctor be returned to the universe, someone says 'oh not this again'. meaning amy, even growing up without a crack in her wall, still had enough madness or otherness to shout and scream about her not-so-imaginary raggedy man. meaning the crack likely affeted her beyond the relms of its universe/timeline, meaning she never got to grow up as a normal little girl.
amelia pond had the fabric of the universe, the entirety of space and time, woven into her skin and it never left.
we need more non white writers in doctor who because realistically if the master regenerated into what humans perceive as an indian british man his instinct would not be to join the nazis, it would be to troll the hell out of everyone. the master would be like "ugh. unit is always racially profiling me" and the doctor would be like "you literally tried to set london on fire" and the master would be like "wow, doctor, racist much? just assuming i'm a criminal because i'm a brown man?" and the doctor would be like "three hundred years ago you tried to blow up the taj mahal" and the master would be like "what can i say? it was in the way"
crucially, where the doctor is more or less indifferent to human bigotry and identity (and would just be confused if subjected to misogyny), the master is really invested in human bigotry and identity and, more to the point, finds them hilarious. john simm's master would complain about reverse racism, michelle gomez's master would be catty and misogynistic to clara and then be like i can't be sexist, i'm literally a woman, i could not more clearly be wearing high heels, and sacha dhawan's master would commiserate with yaz about racism whilst telling her to her face that she is lesser than him for being human
Memory loss as a method of separation / narrative device
The absolute horror of Donna losing her memories to the point where she also loses the personal growth she gained while travelling
The Doctor and Wilf and Sylvia being sad and pained about this
Things I do have a problem with:
I actually donât mind that he does it against her will but I donât like that itâs framed as noble and tragic, rather than a very dark thing to do, a violation of trust and consent and a âI know bestâ pull typical of Tenâs more Time Lord Victorious moments
Like I get that weâre meant to believe that it was mindwipe or death, but the last thing we see Donna do is sob and beg the Doctor not to wipe her mind while he forces a mindwipe on her, then itâs framed as something that happened rather than a choice
Thereâs a lingering focus on his pain, his loss of her, his angst at having to wipe her memories and stop existing to her. This is understandable to a point, but it does sometimes feel like Donna losing her memories and some of her personality is something that happens to the Doctor, not Donna.
I actually quite like aspects of Star Beast but one of the problems I have with it and with the 60th specials in general is that they continue this framing of the mindwipe as Something That Happened rather than a choice the Doctor made, even if it was a choice that was dark but ultimately necessary to keep Donna alive.
Donna is granted stunningly little interiority about it when it comes to anything more complicated than âoh wow, a whole life I forgotâ. Sheâs never mad at him, not even in a âI get you had to do it and I guess Iâm glad you did but I still have to process the violation of trustâ way. Sheâs only mad that she gave the lottery money away because of her subconscious principles. And this from a character who has âhot temperedâ and âbossyâ as main traits. I fully expected a bit of resentment to come out more in Wild Blue Yonder and that would have been the perfect time to deal with it, but instead sheâs not even cross when he nearly leaves her behind (which, again, seriously?? Sheâs not even gonna give him a bit of lip over it? Donna âIâm not blinking flip jumping Iâm supposed to be getting marriedâ Nobleâs fate is to be platonically Taming-of-the-Shrewâd?).
I think itâs also buckwild to see the Doctor return to this companion whose memory he wiped and express no real guilt about having done it, when in the intervening years heâs seen the effects that memory/history tampering had on Amy and Rory, had his own memory wiped of Clara, and been called out by Bill on the whole âitâs fucked to go around wiping peopleâs memoriesâ thing. (This is also why I didnât like Thirteen wiping Adaâs memory and the like, but thatâs a side tangent and a much smaller quibble.)
#okay yes EXACTLY this is bar for bar how i feel about it #i think the fact that rtd saw moffat's critique/subversion of it in hell bent and the 60th is what he came back with says a lot #about the fact that he maybe still didn't understand the actual problem in the first place
#like let's look at what hell bent does to subvert it. #while it's obviously intentional that moffat chose to have the doctor forget #it's also intentional that clara forgetting was an option on the table that she consented to #more than the forgetting being the problem it's the fact that the narrative made it all about the doctor's feelings and not donna's
#and whereas hell bent has a huge amount of interest in clara's interiority and how she feels about her near-loss of agency #& in fact a big part of the point of the ep is that the doctor had been ignoring clara's feelings to drown in a sort of self-centred pain #the 60th STILL doesn't have any interest in donna's interiority or feelings #she never gets her 'i am entitled to that' moment. rtd still seems more interested in the doctor in the end
Tags from @aerithisms
Yes this! I find it wild enough from an in-universe perspective that this character goes through learning this lesson and then unlearns it, or at least doesnât express the things heâs supposed to have learned from it, but itâs âŠ? Bizarre? Fascinating? To see the writer either refuse to engage with how his successor built on these themes or just ⊠possibly fail to understand the deconstruction at all?
Like neither of those options are flattering to RTD as a writer. And I donât actually think heâs a useless writer, I think he has written extremely good things at his best. But he seems to get very stuck on things and not want to move on from them, whether thatâs from a nostalgia perspective or simply his own interpretation of his past work. And then I think, âwell, if you canât engage with outside perspective on your work enough to transform it, no wonder you come back to this show twenty years later and this happensâ.
Moffat once said of him âhe creates interesting characters and then melts themâ and this was in reference to his antagonists, but I think itâs in a weird way the most succinct summary of him as a writer. He creates interesting characters and then melts them because he doesnât know what else to do with them, because heâs always melted them before, because people seem to love it when he melts them, because this is the part where they get melted, because he doesnât seem to realise his own pattern of melting his characters.
The 60th anniversary should have been any writerâs dream, the chance to come back to a show with your original cast and tie up any loose ends or undo anything youâve regretted since. I thought at the time that he had possibly come to understand the flaws in how Donnaâs exit played out, had seen how memory erasure had been unpacked in the show since he left, and had come back ready to write an interesting story that, while not devoted to or preoccupied with the ramifications of what had happened, at least acknowledged them. I came away with the impression that he really only gave Donna her memories back because fans had begged for a Happy Ending for her, and heâd as usual learnt the wrong lesson.
You see, circling back to the âhe creates interesting characters then melts themâ thing, RTDâs response to that back in the day had been to change the ending of New Earth so that the cattle humans all got to live instead of being killed by the Doctor, who presumably would have been the one really suffering with pangs of guilt about the whole thing. If you remember the scene where the Doctor cures them all of their illnesses, itâs extremely âEverybody Lives from Moffatâs much-praised The Doctor Dancesâ. He didnât even take away the meaning being âhe creates original concepts then does unoriginal things with themâ, he was still reheating Moffatâs nachos when trying to change his pattern of repeating everything!
I donât know, I donât know if the 60th was like that because he couldnât conceive of anything else or just because he really doesnât like doing anything unsafe. Seems crazy to accuse Stuntcasting McGee of that. Perhaps âickyâ is a better a word. For a guy who loves to write about how dark the Doctor is, he seems squicked out by the idea of any of the Doctorâs friends having to work through genuine hurt or resentment for things heâs done to them. Which is insane, because some of his best moments have been exactly that (the weird tension between 10 and Jack, Jackie accusing the Doctor of endangering those around him, Mickey calling the Doctor out for everything). Heâs so in love with his own mythology itâs like he canât let his Barbie dolls fight anymore, and the 60th was slightly more boring than it should have been because of it.
Because thatâs my whole thing, I didnât want the 60th to necessarily fix everything with Donna bc you canât, it happened, Iâm never about making it unproblematic and in fact I think thatâs where RTD goes wrong a lot. But there was such an interesting story sitting there, ripened by fourteen years of storytelling.
The Doctor back with an old face - why, does he regret something? The Doctor after losing someone through memory loss, after being scolded for wiping memories without consent, after finding their whole life is a lie and they donât remember a whole bunch of it. That Doctor, going back to the friend whose memory he had wiped without her consent, the friend who was always brutally honest and stubborn and opinionated. The friend who saved the face whose lesson was âto hold him to accountâ, the face who got his memory wiped! It was all set up for him to bring it home and look splendidly clever.
idk if it was said before but if i were master/missy id kms repeatedly until iâd regenerate into looking like clara oswald. I would haunt that old man and i would torture him just by being clara oswald it would be so good >:)
Is this what u wanted? Five foot one and crying, big brown eyes, look at me i am her and i will do insane shit and u will deal with the fact that actually this is too close to what She would have done too
The prince slides the glass slipper on. A perfect fit. The whole room stares at the two of them in shock--a scullery maid is the owner of the infamous glass slipper?
Cinderella's lip trembles. She blinks away tears. The prince reaches up to catch one before it can fall. He knows there's only one thing left to do. He grasps her hands tight in his.
"Cinderella," he starts solemnly. "The things you have been put through by your stepmother and stepsisters all this time--being forced to be their maid, them stealing your rightful inheritance from your father--you need to know that there's a name for all that."
"W-what?" Cinderella stammers. "What do you mean, I don't understand-"
"Cinderella, what you underwent all this time--it's called abuse. Emotional, verbal...even physical at times. It's wrong, and you didn't deserve any of it. Any reasonable parent would have loved and treated you as a daughter and a child, not a servant."
Cinderella looks frantically at her stepmother and stepsisters. Her stepmother looks as if she swallowed a lemon. Her stepsisters look terrified. "No," she insists. "That's not--they didn't abuse me. They gave me food, clothes, a roof over my head-"
The prince shakes his head sadly. "No," he interrupts gently, "No, Cinderella. That's not enough. Giving you the bare minimum--that's neglect. Everything they did--it's illegal. And they will be punished for breaking the law in the way they deserve, I promise. They'll be beheaded at dawn."
the more you talk sense about what shane playing for montreal would mean for his ability to just exist normally, the more i want a fic that's mostly ilya realising that shane cannot live a normal life. like finding twitter and instagram accounts dedicated to following shane's every move, photos from people who clearly lurk outside his building, video compilations of him doing his shopping at weird times of the night because there are fewer people around and being visibly freaked out that people were still watching him (in the early years, before he got used to it and started paying people to do it for him), shane offhandedly mentioning the stalkers and the kidnapping threats ("but it was dealt with, it's fine"). shane is a level of famous that is unimaginable to most people.
Babe I want the exact same thing.ïżŒ
I think North America likely feels like a more relaxed market for Ilya because heâs gone from Moscow to Boston. From my understanding, Boston has a much more relaxed hockey market than Moscow does, and America overall appears to be less focused on hockey than both Russia and Canada.
Now, Ilya has been to Montreal. Heâs been to Montreal many times. He knows they have devoted fans because those are the guys burning him in effigy outside of the stadium. But he has never seen how Montreal treats Shane Hollander in public, because he canât be seen with Shane in public. And, notably, Montreal is likely the place where he has spent the least amount of time going out into the city itself, because almost every single time he visits there he holes up with Shane Hollanderâs hole. I can see Ilya having a very limited understanding of Montreal culture and Shane Hollanderâs place in it just because he would have very little genuine opportunity to learn about it. He mostly just sees how the fans act during hockey games and sports fans are always emphatic during games. That doesnât mean itâs the entire city.
You also have to take Ilyaâs perception of North American living in the context that moving to America has been a fundamentally freeing experience for Ilya.
Like. At home, Ilyaâs worried about the goddamn Kremlin. He goes back to Russia and has to be like âare the phone lines tapped.â His baseline is a much higher and more insidious degree of surveillance than Shane has ever experienced. Coming to America has been a freeing experience to Ilya, so he very likely isnât walking around with the presumption of âwow, what a surveillance state.â Like, heâs been in a surveillance state. He gets to go to America and gets forced into 0 state propaganda campaigns and barely ever worries if the house is bugged and when a car backfires he doesnât get that brief flash of having to wonder if the fucking feds are here to disappear him. He has to deal with some of the inconveniences of fame but for the most part he would associate North America with a much freer manner of living. Because fundamentally, Boston was the first escape heâs ever had from an extremely controlling and abusive environment where he was watched very closely. He does not worry about being watched in North America nearly as much as he does in Russia.
But Shane Hollander may very well be the most famous man in Montreal.
Montreal is not an escape for Shane Hollander the way Boston is for Ilya. Shaneâs escape is the house he had built in the middle of the goddamn woods where no one could see him. Shane goes to Montreal and all eyes are on him.
And Shane in Montreal would likely be supported and beloved by the public but there still a danger that comes from being on a pedestal. There is a reason why we call it a fall from grace. Any kind of position in the public eye comes with drawbacks and I just canât help but think that Shane Hollander would be experiencing obscene levels of fame given Montrealâs hockey culture and Shane Hollanderâs position within greater Canadian hockey culture. He would be under constant scrutiny.
I just. I would love to see more in fics of Shane learning what Russia does to Ilya and Ilya learning what Canada in general and specifically Montreal does to Shane. I donât know of any fics like that but I wish I did.
Snapping birch kind of has a background scene that will never make it in the fic because it happens off social media that gets kind of close? Iâve referenced it before in the tags of another post, but I didnât go into much detail.
As already revealed in snapping birch, Shane did request a transfer this season, and that transfer was rejected. As already discussed in another post, Shane knew that transfer would be rejected before he put it in. He understood there was absolutely no way anyone would ever trade him out of Montreal. He did it because everyone else was so desperate to try, and it was still the hardest goddamn thing he has ever done in his life, even though he knew it wouldnât work.
Shane managed it so he could be in Boston with Ilya the day after the trade was requested. Ilya thought this was because Shane needed comfort and support. He knew how hard it was for him to request a trade. He knew how much it killed him. He thought Shane was there so Ilya could comfort him.
The trade request is rejected within 24 hours of it being submitted. Shane isnât surprised in the slightest. And Ilya realizes that Shane came down for Ilyaâs sake, not his own.
I cannot put in strong enough terms just how badly Ilya wanted Shane out from under his awful fucking coachâs thumb. He was constantly terrified. He pinned so much hope on this idea that the trade request would be the thing to finally get Shane safe and it fucking killed him when it didnât.
Shane had said the entire time that they wouldnât trade him. And he was so unsurprised that the trade request had been rejected almost automatically. Shane just kind of wanted to take the loss and move on but Ilya wanted to talk about what the fuck was going on, so Shane had to be like. Ilya. They are never letting me go.
Shane has the phone number for the police chief because they have to call him in sometimes to try to make the city riot less about how good he is at hockey. He made Ilya take him to a hospital several hours outside of the city when he got injured this season because he knew he couldnât set foot in a Montreal hospital without it ending up on the goddamn news. The first time Rose spent the night at his apartment, she got papâd, and by 8am the next day there were headlines that Shane had lost his fucking virginity the night before.
Ilya is the most beloved player on his team. He is incredibly popular in Boston. The fans would riot if they tried to trade him. But they probably would not literally riot. Boston just isnât big enough of a hockey market for that. Shane is outright dodging calls from Montreal police right now because fans are riled up enough over whatever the fuck is happening with him that itâs causing an active concern for public safety, and Shane doesnât have an explanation he can give give them.
Shaneâs image has outgrown the possibility of containment. He lost control of his own fame years ago. He cannot just get off this ride. I wish more fics explored that.
