a little soviet space race propaganda inspired design for @opal-apparition’s gorgeous fic apogee
special mention to Alexei Leonov and the random Canadian & Russian astronauts whose spacesuits i looked at for this i <3 insignias and workwear and yaoi
I just know that Shane was one of those kids who didn't speak til three and when he did he busted out a full sentence one day and that sentence was, "Jason stole my FUCKING crayons" followed by a WHAP as Shane hit Jason and Jason hit the floor and Yuna and David were summoned immediately to the school to have an Important Conversation and David sat there the entire time staring at Yuna out the side of his head because Shane did NOT get those "interpersonal skills" from the mailman and Yuna's only response to the entire conversation was, "Well. Did Jason steal his fucking crayons???"
Twenty-three years later Ilya Rozanov dies on a floor in Ottawa after hearing this story for the first time.
what shane means: i can never love a woman in any way resembling the way i love you and when i tried she called my shit IMMEDIATELY so what im trying to say is i can't sidestep whatever we are the way you can, i will never ever love anyone but u
what ilya hears: somewhere along the line of our multi-year situationship that began with me immediately sucking ur dick, i have determined that i like men.
Ilya’s an asshole? Ilya “stayed at a children’s hospital so much later than his teammates he had to get a cab home” Rozanov? Ilya “he’d probably buy them all Ferraris” Rozanov? Ilya “there will be a trust set up for my niece” Rozanov? Ilya “didn’t retaliate when his brother said horrible things to him including a gay slur but attacked him when he dared insult Svetlana” Rozanov? Ilya “played in the pool with his teammates kids” Rozanov? Ilya “delayed practice 15 minutes so the team could play with a puppy” Rozanov? Ilya “the only nhl member outside of Scott’s friends to support him at Scott hunter night after his very public coming out” Rozanov? Ilya “collecting queer hockey players so his camp can be super inclusive” Rozanov? Ilya “trying to create a safe space” Rozanov? Mmmm I don’t think so
It makes absolutely 0 sense to me why everyone hates this man. Like sorry he's better at hockey than you?? And he's funny??? He's never actually offensive or cruel in his chirping??!
[Shane] couldn’t help it; he’d had enough of people being grossed out by his relationship for one day.
Just because what you wanted didn't happen, doesn't mean it's queerbaiting. It is now being used an excuse when the ship you want didn't get together. Queerbaiting has to do with marketing.
Queerbait: A cookbook that you learned about from ads with pictures of people eating tasty looking soups and the author's social media posts about how soup lovers are going to love it, proves to have no soup recipes.
Not queerbait: A cookbook has no soup recipes. You assumed there would be some based on vibes and wishful thinking. No soups were ever advertised or promised.
Also not queerbait: A cookbook that was advertised as containing soup recipes has soup recipes but not for the types of soups you like.
Finished my TLG re-read and I've been seeing posts circulating coming to Shane's defense in that central conflict, and I am finding them interesting because there's often this tactic agreement in them that anyone else would have picked up that Ilya is going through it, but Shane doesn't because of [insert valid reason I usually agree with].
But...I actually don't think Shane is missing it. I think Ilya has built a pattern of lying about anything that isn't absolutely perfect about his life or interior state, from something as small as not sleeping well to as major as how much he would mind Shane sleeping with other people.
Shane in-text is aware that something is off with Ilya. It's very present in his thoughts that he's missing something, that something is going on with Ilya, that Ilya is withholding things and picking little fights but not saying what the issue is:
And what I think Shane doesn't get credit for is that he asks Ilya about it.
Shane doesn't just ruminate, or barrel on as if nothing is wrong. He tries to engage, he tries to do things to cheer Ilya up and plan things he knows Ilya enjoys. And when that doesn't work he asks, outright and directly, and Ilya shuts the conversation down, repeatedly.
Ilya is deflecting and avoiding the discussion through feigning ignorance, snark, purposefully misunderstanding Shane's words, trying to turn it into a fight, and outright telling Shane not to worry and that he's fine. And to Shane's thought there at the end, how is Shane supposed to force the issue, if Ilya doesn't want to talk about it? What does support in that moment look like, when Ilya won't share what's wrong?
And Ilya is actively aware that he's dodging conversation and withholding the information from Shane. He acknowledges it in both his internal monologue and out loud:
And it's clearly a deep-rooted habit of avoidance.
Ilya recognizes the specific face Shane makes when Ilya us using snark to deflect a serious conversation, aka, it happens so often that there's a recognizable and specific response it elicits. Shane yanks back that bid for connection and understanding the second Ilya doesn't meet it. It's such a habit that even after the plane incident, Ilya can't acknowledge that he might not be okay, when it would be wild to expect him to be okay in that situation (and when Shane clearly doesn't expect him to be).
Even in the Big Fight itself, we see the pattern playing out in how it starts. Ilya snarks and digs instead of saying why he's upset. Shane asks five (5!!) times for some type of help in understanding what is going on with Ilya. And Ilya rebuffs him with passive aggressiveness, snark, purposeful misunderstanding, and bad-faith interpretations of his words.
Ilya is trying to pick a fight to avoid the actual conversation about his emotional states and wants and needs, and he's resenting Shane for not understanding something that Ilya not only never told him about but worked to actively hide from him (something Ilya's own therapist points out isn't reasonable for him to expect of Shane, which. Many people seem to forget in their recollections of the book...)
And how does Shane respond when he learns the shape of what Ilya is upset about?
He feels terrible for not knowing Ilya's emotional state and that he'd been unhappy in their status quo, though he sets aside his own feelings in the name of supporting Ilya in the immediate moment.
And he arrows in on Ilya's self-sacrifice in the name of Shane's happiness as a problem that needs to be addressed, even with others in Shane's life don't seem to recognize it as a problem. Their relationship is foundationally one between equals. Shane doesn't want Ilya giving unequally into it. Ilya lashing out frames it as a balance of 'who has given more', but Shane doesn't want either of them to 'win' the who-can-sacrifice more-for-the-other-competition. He wants neither of them to be engaging in that competition in the first place!
The other piece I think that gets forgotten is that Shane is the one who initially introduces the idea of changing things. They have a plan together (that Ilya actively participated in making!), but Shane floats the idea that they could have another plan:
Ilya doesn't take him up on it, which is fair. But that's a sign for Ilya that Shane is ready to have that conversation (and the reader sees Shane's narration is full of chafing at hiding), one that Ilya misses in his assumption that Shane is perfectly happy in the status quo because Ilya hasn't actually asked:
And importantly, Ilya's stakes have changed. At the end of Heated Rivalry, he communicates that the consequences of being outed are fairly dire in terms of being an openly queer, famous Russian. Ilya through therapy is acknowledging (or coming to realize) that the stakes are different for him now.
But Ilya never tells Shane, who is still operating on 'dire impacts' assumptions in his drive to protect their relationship and keep it a secret. And so Shane doesn't tell Ilya that he is frustrated with aspects of needing to hide their relationship in turn, because that frustration feels like a small price to pay against Ilya's stakes.
They both proceed forward with incorrect understanding of each other, born out of trying to protect the other from their own unhappiness. And it's great, organic, character-driven setup for them both to learn and grow, individually and together within the space of their relationship, and come out the other end stronger.
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
titsay
kaledo-art
