Iphys, 35, disaster bi, Episcopalian. If you're wondering whether to send an ask/message, tag me, or add to my posts: The answer is yes. Header by siratonin.
I'm an admin of the Bucktommy Safe Zone community, which is dedicated to keeping out the ship war. It's a very supportive space; if you're a Bucktommy fan, come say hi! It's request-to-join, but you'll be approved as long as you're a human.
Regular Safe Zone posts include:
Episode discussions
Bucktommy Watch: Episode night posts summarizing Bucktommy-relevant spoilers
We are part of the 911 Armistice Collective along with the Buddie Safe Zone and the Buddietommy Safe Zone.
Also I'm Iphys on AO3, and most of my 9-1-1 fic is on tumblr tagged #118dailydrabble.
There is a kid out there who did every single one of his school essays and projects and short stories and friendly introductions at the beginning of the year about Shane Hollander. He did his book reports on the books Shane recommended in interviews. He saved his money to buy that stupid cologne Shane advertised. He got a puck from Shane once at warm ups and he slept with it in his bed for three weeks. He writes his moms name on his stick tape because Shane did it first. He watches the Olympics in awe. He gets into fights with kids at school about whose a better hockey player and its Shane all the way, no matter what the other kids told him or what their moms and dads said. Shane is the best.
And this kid did not have a lot of friends. His teachers thought he wasn't very smart because he made everything about hockey. And they dismissed him when he struggled with math and reading. "if you could just put some of your hockey energy into school, then maybe you would get better." His classmates laughed at the hockey themed valentines day cards him and his mom had to hand make because nowhere was selling hockey themed valentines day cards. And they laugh at him when he repeats the same thing over and over about "getting pucks deep, pucks deep, pucks deep." When he would play all by himself on the yard pretending he was skating, picking up any big stick he could find on the ground, they'd push him around. "Can we play? We'll be defenders" and ram him and take his stick. And he'd just go through all the penalties they would have just gotten over and over again until he can calm down. He celebrated every birthday at the ice rink in his full hockey gear even though he didn't really have classmates showing up. Not for lack of invite.
And his parents try to steer him away from it. They try and watch new sports, they try and get him to watch kids shows, get into things kids his age like, but all he wants to do is watch reruns of the metros cup wins. Wants to wear his hat backwards with his black shirt because that's how Shane looks in the interviews. Memorizes the answers he gives in french even though this kid never learned french in school. And its useless. This kid is hooked and they just kinda have to ride this wave.
So when the announcement comes for the Game Changers camp, these parents do absolutely everything to get him there. They don't care what it takes, this is like a light for all of them really in the midst of all the bullying at school and the meltdowns at home and the obsessive routines that fall apart if even one thing is out of place.
And they explain to the camp that their boy might have a hard time. Might need some time to adjust. That he struggles with math, and reading, and can get caught up in all the rules sometimes. Preemptively trying to say "he's not a bad kid. he's trying his best."
So at the end of the first day, his parents are prepared for a meltdown. Its new, its a lot of kids, the rink can get loud and cold, and he doesn't always do well with transitioning out of hockey. He's hard to pull off the ice at home.
And they can see some upset under the surface when they arrive. He clearly doesn't want to go home. Thats no surprise.
What is a surprise is the way Shane gets down on one knee next to where the boy is sitting upset on the ground. He doesn't move to touch him. He just gets down and the two of them softly have a chat. The boy is tugging on his hair and nodding at what Shane says. And eventually he stands and the parents walk over to them.
"You must be the parents. Its good to meet you," Shane says softly. "I was just going over some things about tomorrow. So that way he would know the schedule."
And they can see their son isn't quite happy, still clearly exhausted. He'll nap in the car and be grumpy at dinner. But he is much more regulated than they expected him to be.
"And, I was telling him about my schedule when I go home. About getting some quite time, making sure I can decompress. I think that's what all good hockey players need, right buddy?"
"Right buddy," he repeats.
And for all the understanding that seems to be there, his parents are just grateful that of all the things their kid could have a special interest in, its Shane Hollander.
Thank you for the card you sent for my birthday. It was very nice. I have never had a hockey birthday card before, even though I have looked. I hope your birthday in August is very “n-Ice” too. My parents say that you might be too busy to have the hockey camp this year. I thought they must be wrong, because you said to me routine is very important to being a good hockey player, and you are the best hockey player, and also you promised there would be a slot for me at camp next year and you have always kept your promises to me, like that you would remember my birthday and that it gets better when you have teammates and it has.
My parents explained that you have had a very hard year, and that you might need extra time to rest from that, and you have said that it's very important that hockey players rest after doing hard things.
Please do not worry about your promise if you have to close the hockey camp. I hope you get lots of rest after your hard year. My parents have also said that we have to be careful about what TV we watch about you because some people are saying things that are not nice and we shouldn't listen to them.
People have said a lot of things about me that are not nice. When this happens, what helps most is to get on the ice and skate with people who are nice like my parents and my teammates. You should make sure you take time to skate with your parents and with Ilya Rosanov.
It also helps to hear people say nice things about you, so I want to say some nice things about you. You are my favorite hockey player and your shot is really good and so is your backchecking. You are also Tanner and Marty's favorite hockey player, even though Marty isn't supposed to like Centaurs players because his family's team is Toronto.
I don't know if Ilya Rosanov is a good hockey player, but Evan is a Raiders fans and he says he's really good and a playmaker and also really funny and also could you please tell Ilya Rosanov that from him.
Thank you again for the birthday card. Do not worry about writing me back. I hope you feel better soon.
I know this isn't going to be a popular opinion but #myirina wasn't a frail white dove that got ensnared by evil Grigori and was never anything but kind and sad. People aren't really like that. Maybe Ilya thinks of her that way but that's because she died traumatically when he was twelve.
My Irina was a mean bitch, but she was also funny about it. That's the first thing we ever know of her. She was funny and she was beautiful. I don't see her being a mean girl in the traditional sense, but she was clever and cutting and quick. You faced up against her and she was jumping for the jugular at an unexpected angle and then she laughed with your blood on her teeth. And you couldn't even get mad at her. It was a good, fair hit. Touché.
I see Grigori walking on a street of Moscow and looking up at the sound of laughter, and Irina and a couple of her friends are out on a smoke break from wherever they work. Irina is still talking, moving her hand in an expansive gesture of disdain and delivering the most brutal line he's ever heard, and then she finishes and joins in the laughter and her laugh is so loud and free that it makes him stop in his tracks. She sees this older man looking at her, checking her out, and isn't moved because this is not the first time and it won't be the last one either. Irina is fucking gorgeous. She has wispy brown curls that keep escaping her bun and sticking to her neck in the summer heat, she has the sharp angular facial features of a Tsarina, thick pouty lips with a mole above the left side, and the darkest most intense brown eyes in the world. She sees this man looking, smiles knowingly and sends him a wink before returning her attention to her friends and her cigarette.
Grigori wants wants wants.
He courts her for a couple of months and Irina is receptive enough to it. He's rich and established and handsome, broad shoulders and a commanding presence and sparkling blue eyes that cut through her and read her like a book. That's where Ilya gets his perceptiveness, not his mother but his father. People are always distracted by Irina's beauty and spark, she's never felt truly seen until Grigori.
They have sex (and Grigori is not her first time, she's had plenty of boyfriends since she was twelve or thirteen), she gets pregnant, and her religious family throws her out. Irina could have gotten an abortion, because abortions have been perfectly legal and commonplace in Russia since 1955. She doesn't want to. She wants to keep her baby because Irina is cool and fun and clever and sparking with wit, but she's also depressed, just like her son. She believes that this baby will fulfill something that has always been empty inside her.
Grigori agrees to take care of her and the baby. He even agrees to marry her (in a religious ceremony, which he's soooooo annoyed by because he's a true believer in the soviet state and a staunch atheist) so her family starts talking to her again, even if the relationship is never fixed and the distance grows and grows until it becomes full strangement. Grigori gets them a nice apartment, big enough to build a family, and buys her pretty dresses and fur coats and sparkly jewels that she can admire in the mirror while feeling like the luckiest woman in the world. She's happy and content with her life, until Alexei comes along.
The Post-Partum Depression hits her like a truck. This baby was supposed to fix her and he doesn't fix anything, he makes everything worse. She's struggling and she's drowning and doesn't know how to climb out of the hole. Grigori doesn't know what PPD fucking is, he just sees that his beautiful bright young wife has become an angry crying woman who abandons their child to cry on his crib while she takes a smoke break that sometimes last hours. He comes back home to find the baby alone and Irina is on the rooftop, eyes wet and a whole carton of cigarette butts scattered around her.
It gets worse before it gets better. Grigori sends Andrei/Alexei to live with his brother and his wife for a while, until Irina can be trusted to be alone with him. It takes a couple of months, but she does get better, and they get the baby back and never speak of it again... but Grigori is now aware that there is a weakness within his wife he hadn't seen before, and respects her less for it. He's more commanding, less flexible, always has to get his own way. Irina fights back but always ends up surrendering to her husband, because what else can she do?
She can leave, of course. Nowadays one in every two marriages ends up in divorce in Russia, and it wasn't that different under the Soviet Union. There wouldn't be much of a stigma. But Irina doesn't want to leave. Irina wants to live in her beautiful apartment with her important husband and their cute baby. The cruelty is just starting out, and she doesn't think it's that bad. She doesn't want to realize that it will only get worse.
She loves her son. She does. She struggles with him, because she's young and inexperienced and still struggling with her mental health, but she does love her Lyosha, her sweet baby boy. Grigori takes over raising him when he's old enough, making him in his own image, but she's not too concerned. That's what a father does with his son.
And then she gets pregnant with Ilya.
She's gotten pregnant once before, after Alexei. She had quietly gone to the doctor and gotten an abortion. Grigori had found out eventually, but he hadn't been too bothered. He likes this Irina. The Irina who is back to being funny and beautiful and kind, who makes him laugh and shares his bed and takes care of the things he doesn't want to deal with. No need to have another baby and risk breaking her again.
Irina doesn't get an abortion with Ilya. Alexei is getting older and she misses having a baby. Not the part with the crying and the diapers and the teething and the colics because she doesn't remember those parts, those parts disappear in the fuzzy happy memories of small socks and lullabies and being the center of someone's world.
Irina wants to have a daughter. Her own baby all for herself.
Grigori isn't happy, but he isn't displeased either. Okay. Irina is doing better and she'll be better this time. He does warn her that the moment she slips he'll send both kids away, that he won't be as permissive as the last time.
Ilya is a beautiful boy. He has his father's nearly blond hair and sparkly blue eyes, but his face is all Irina. "He will be such a beautiful boy," she sighs, delighted. "All the girls will fall in love with him, yes, they will."
Grigori smiles at that, kisses her forehead, and tells her that she's done well.
And she has. The pregnancy has gone well, and she feels fine after it, and Ilyushenka is such a sweet, easy baby. He's all sweetness and gummy smiles and soft curls that smell like heaven. Her little boy.
And then the URSS falls.
I think this is when Grigori goes from being a detached kind-of-shitty husband and father to being really cruel. Everything he ever believed in, everything he ever worked for, gone. He's police and even he's going hungry. His family is going hungry. All of Russia is, of course, but Grigori is a proud man. He got a beautiful clever wife by taking care of her, by buying her beautiful things and providing a good home for her and her babies.
Grigori Rozanov has a newborn at home, and every single one of his faraway hungry cries feels like a blow and an insult. Irina screams at him and throws things at the wall and then cries because her babies need food and what kind of man is he, if he can't get it? He hits her for the first time then. It won't happen often, even now, but it's a line crossed.
The world changes under their feet. They adapt as they can.
Grigori spends years fighting to keep his position, but he manages it. He's still an important man. Less important. Less respected. Angrier. He comes home to a wife who is not in love with him anymore. She fell in love with someone greater than life, and now he's just a man. It's cruel of Irina to hold it against him. She still does it.
They still have sex, they still take care of the family, and they still go to parties together, he serious and she sparkling with wit and joy, pretty enough that her dresses don't look too old and her neck doesn't look too bare where the diamonds used to be. They make it work, but all former happiness is long dead.
Irina is doing worse. It isn't sudden. She gets a little worse, and then a little bit worse, and so on. She clings to her baby Ilyushenka with both hands, because he's still so little and so sweet and can't see how much Irina is failing him. Ilya becomes her mother's perfect little gentleman and is understood that it's his job to keep her happy. Grigori resents this because she's no longer happy in the first place, Lyosha resents it because he wishes he was their mother's favorite, and Ilya SHOULD resent it because he's fucking five and this is unfair to him. He's the one getting punished by their family anyway.
And here is when I'm probably going to lose you-- Irina doesn't want to leave because a lot of people are worse off. She got married young instead of studying or building a career, so even if she wanted to she couldn't get a job. There are a lot of women fighting for what little there is, and most of them have degrees and experience. She's just a pretty girl that married an important soviet man and then her country gave up right under her. The only way she realistically has to climb up... is to find another man who is more important than Grigori.
Irina cheats on him with Sergey Vetrov.
It's not a conspiracy, or anything. Sergey and Grigori are good friends, and they have children of the same age, and Sergey is rich. He's so rich. Everyone around them has become poorer but Sergey defected years ago to play for the Boston Raiders and became a traitor, but now that the URSS is done for, he gets to come back a rich man and be adored. At least for the summers, when the MLH is in the off season.
Did I say that they're good friends?? Grigori hates his fucking guts. But still. He's an important rich man and he wants to keep him close.
Ilya and Svetlana play together under the watchful eye of her nanny, and Irina and Sveta's mother smoke and laugh in the kitchen. And then Svetlana's mother doesn't come back to Russia with them one summer, and Irina smokes and laughs with Sergei.
It takes a couple of weeks for things to escalate, but they do. Irina does it because she resents her husband, and then she thinks about what being with Sergey instead would be like. She knows that he was a terrible husband to Svetlana's mother, that he cheated on her and humiliated her, that he allowed people to mock her dark skin and terrible Russian to her face, but she's convinced it will be different with her. Irina could be a good Russian wife, and secretly has always thought herself smarter and better than Svetlana's mother, with her stuttering Russian and her constant complaints about a husband who kept her in comfort and gave her everything she could wish. She was a very pretty plaything, but Irina is a real woman. Sergei seems to agree.
Grigori knows. He knows the moment he sees her after it first happens. He bites his tongue and dies of humiliation in silence, and Irina loves every second of it.
The summer is about to end, and Irina asks him about maybe staying in his Russian home with her kids, because she wants to leave her husband. He refuses, and refuses loudly. Irina thought they were having an affair, that Sergey was crazy about her. She was wrong. Irina was just there out of convenience. He’s had plenty of good Russian women on his bed, just like every other summer.
Grigori knew it would end like this, and when Irina comes back home early, clearly having cried, he smiles at her as nasty as he can and asks her about Sergey. Ilya and Alexei hide in their room while their parents SCREAM at each other. It gets bad. It never improves again.
Next summer, Vetrov calls Grigori and tells him that his little princess Sveta misses Ilyukha, and wants him to come play with her. It's understood, of course, that it will happen as he wishes. Grigori feels the plastic of the phone crack under his grasp while he agrees. He drops Ilya off whenever is asked of him, but Irina never steps foot on the house again.
Sergey Vetrov takes the children skating, and sees just how good Ilya is. Grigori and Irina always brag about his skills, of course, but he never paid attention before. He's exceptional. Irina wasn't good enough to keep his interest. Ilya is. Irina doesn't allow herself to be resentful. (She tries not to be. She tries so hard. She loves Ilya with everything she has, and so she tries for him.)
Irina is doing badly. Because of course she is. She's a mentally ill woman with no resources trapped in a loveless marriage with a man who resents her and hurts her. She's thirty now, and the rejection has made her feel ugly and boring. Grigori reinforces that belief. Ilya spends a lot of time hugging his crying mother and telling her how beautiful and special she is. It's not every day, it's not even often, but it isn’t rare either.
Grigori hates her and Alexei imitates his father in all things, which shatters her. She loves her babies so much. And now the only one who loves her back is Ilya. That mentality feeds into it and makes everything worse, obviously, but Irina is too far gone to see it. The distance between Alexei and Ilya grows and grows.
In the end, she hates her life enough to put an end to it. She really couldn't help it. She tried to survive for her Ilyushenka, but he wasn't enough, and that only made her feel like a bad, unworthy mother. Her baby was the most perfect boy in the world. He should have been enough. And he wasn't.
In the end, when she swallows the pills, she only feels tired. There is nothing inside of her that she could give. What use is she to anyone?
Grigori hated her, at the end, but never stopped loving her. Even when he couldn’t look at her without picturing her blood on his hands. When his mind goes, he keeps believing that his clever, beautiful Irina is waiting for him somewhere. He asks Alexei, and the strange man that he doesn’t recognize but looks like his late brother, he asks the young pretty wife he took after her and forgot first, he asks Ilya, who he always remembers knowing but rarely how or why. “Where is Irina Karlovna, where is my pretty wife?” No one dares tell him, until well into his illness, where Alexei snaps that she’s dead. He gets to see his father cry, for the first time, wrecked by sobs. He grieves tremendously, and then forgets an hour later.
Alexei never tells him again.
.
Now, let me be clear, I LOVE Irina Rozanova. I think she's the coolest and the most tragic figure in the Game Changers Universe. This version of her is no less deserving of pity and love than the beautiful white dove that never once made a mistake. The cheating came to me while writing this and honestly, it's not that important in the story. Just a sharper drop on their marriage, that had been sinking for a long time.
I defend women's rights AND wrongs, and she deserved better, always.
ilyaaaa ☺️<3 ... concussion >:[ and a fractured collarbone :/ out for the playoffs but 🤗 could have been worse 😌☝️ ... i know 🙄 part of the game 🙄 we all get our bell 🔔 rung eventually right? 😊 ... heyy:) heyyyyyyyy:))) ... yes<3 bet-ter🥰🥰 ... i'm sorry i didn't text you last night 😔 ... i was excited about last night ☝️ i'm mostly mad 😠 at marleau for fucking that up 🙄😏 ... you know i had a whole plan to ask you something❗️... i was gonna ask you ☝️❗️ Will You cometomycottage this summer? 🥰🏡 ❌️don't❌️ go to russia🇷🇺 come to my houseee 😤💞 we'll have so much fun :D it's so private :D no one will knoww :D ... mmmwe could have a week💕 or even two✌️💕 we'd be completely alone 👯♂️💞 ~✨️together✨️~ ... oh no 🙄😒 ... ok bye bye 👋☺️ ... 🫡see you next season🫡 ... thank u😊<3 i appreciate it😤<3 ... hellooo😁
look at the republican calendar and see which animal/plant/item is associated with your birthday ok. if you're born january 14 you get the day of the cat
all birthdays are there, don't give up! troubleshooting :
when looking for your birthday, make sure to read the small grey italicized number, not the big orange numbers ; january 14, for example, is on the 25th day of the month of nivôse.
there are three months for each season ; if you're on mobile, you may need to scroll sideways to see the third one.
some birthdays in september are in a special section. that is because the first day of the year is september 22nd, and the last few days of the year before that are special holidays. see :
also, i know i joked about some days being less cool than others, but that's also the point of the calendar : replacing worship of saints with appreciation of the tools and plants that allow us to live. don't feel bad for having topsoil as your day, where would be without topsoil?
a thing about me is i basically never notice a wig or other kind of hairpiece in tv/movies. it has to be party city territory for me to even twig it. people will complain about characters' wigs looking bad and i will nod along but there is like a 90% chance i did not notice for a second while watching. i consider this mostly a blessing.
Yeah, I've cautiously come around on using apostrophes to pluralize single letters; I don't like doing it, but sometimes it's too confusing without. Cursory googling suggests Chicago, MLA, and AP all carve out exceptions, e.g., "mind your p's and q's [or p's and q's]," all the alternatives to which look awful:
Mind your ps and qs.
Mind your ps and qs.
Mind your Ps and Qs. (Actually this is fine and is the title of the Wikipedia article, but the article also pluralizes the lowercase versions with apostrophes, including in a citation from 1876, so there you go.)
I honestly think Gen-Z and younger simply does not understand how recent widespread smartphone adoption is.
I am not that old, and I didn't have a smartphone until probably late high school. For most of my life, many if not most people were not walking around with a magic internet machine in their pocket that they pulled out and used constantly for everything.
