this is my personal blog so it's a huge mixed bag of what i'm obsessed with but i'm usually very good at tagging posts
The new season of Big Brother has started and this terrible show consumes my life every summer. BUT every post will be tagged #bb28
Any Heated Rivalry posts should be tagged with #heated rivalry and/or #hr posting. And any posts about the show supernatural will be tagged #spn
And once the hockey season starts again in October I'm a lightning fan so any game lbs will be tagged #bolts lb and otherwise posts will be tagged #hockey or #tampa bay lightning
otherwise i'm usually pretty good about tagging fandoms/characters/people but feel free to reach out if you'd like something tagged
if the vets have a downfall, it’s gonna happen because they’re playing like the first third of the game is already won. things like devens not putting the showmance up together to try and build favor with lyric when rome hasn’t even been evicted yet, dee and angela becoming increasingly preoccupied with barrett and drew’s position in the middle when they haven’t even taken out one number from the other side. they’re moving on from the battle to the war when the battle isn’t even halfway done.
people who i want to win hoh tonight from most to least:
mallory: target those vets!
lala: also would target some of the vets/red corner. plus all these assholes can stay mad they couldn't make her a HN this week
jason: would probably target the vets/red corner. also if the vets sense danger they might decide to blow up drew's game by revealing that he was the rat who told angela about the faces and laughing at her. this would also hopefully blow up their own games.
taylor: also would probably target the vets/red corner.
lyric: probably come after that side, ALSO the devens comeuppance would be so sweet (please dear god no if rome is still around)
melody: would be interesting to see what she could do, a little afraid she'd be less effective bc of her rat bff in the game
rome: i want jason and melody to stay more so i hope he's gone. i also don't trust him to be an effective opposition to the toolshed but sure i'll take the possibility of taking someone from the toolshed out over some of my lower options.
drew: would probably just keep fruitlessly working for the vets who all hate him and mistrust him. BUT some people do have damaging info about the vets to bring to him and maybe he'll combine that with the rancid vibes from this week to make his own moves and change the game. i feel like 8/10 times it will be boring and contribute to vet steamroll
yash: the first boot who I don't get much of a game sense from. he cannot read or play for shit. it might be a little interesting because of the puppet war between his brand new alliance that i've already forgotten the name of (drew/barrett/devens) vs lyric. who will successfully sway him more in the noms/veto. but he is so bro forward the guy alliance will probably win booo.
barrett: might get caught trying to play the middle but will probably just keep carrying the vets water. maybe he'll wake up. but I wouldn't bet on it
angela: probably a fucking disaster for our hopes of a good season. but she might inadvertently blow up the toolshed or cause someone else like drew to blow it up because of how paranoid she is.
the rest of them: absolutely fucking not. don't even want to contemplate it enough to come up with optimistic/pessimistic/realistic scenarios
I love Matilda because it's a story about a child who sees injustice around her and gets mad about it and questions why things aren't fair, and instead of the ending being that she learns how the world works and that life isn't fair, she catapults one of the adults who abused her out of a building with her mind
med people are so annoying "This family's 8 year old child who was about to go through a major surgery and kept crying that she was hungry so they pitied her and gave her food, she then had a heart attack in the surgery. They're so stupid 😒" girl they didn't know that could happen or why it happens. it takes so little time to explain to them that will happen instead of telling them "no food" with no explanation 10 times
"Before surgery, your body’s reflexes that protect your airway are relaxed by anesthesia. If there’s food or liquid in your stomach, it will near certainly come back up and go into your lungs, which can cause choking, a severe lung / heart infection or even a heart attack. That’s called aspiration, and it is life-threatening. It's hard, but it's only a single day to prevent near certain death. Not eating or drinking beforehand massively lowers the risk and helps prevent these life threatening situations under anesthesia." <- TIP: patients have brains which allows them to receive information just like you
I have four kids. I’ve had one or another of them need some kind of surgical procedure that requires anesthesia four or five times over the past 15 years.
This Tumblr post is the first time someone has explained to me *why* I couldn’t feed them before those instances.
I’m not stupid. I understood that just fine. Hell, my kids would have understood that just fine. But no one bothered to tell us.
i did know this before having kids (i have six). we have a kid that's needed multiple procedures requiring anesthesia. and every single time, i am asked multiple times if i'm sure he was not given any food or water after a certain point.
every single time i have had to say, "i understand that if he had food or water, he could aspirate it into his lungs under anesthesia. i am not lying to you." THEN someone would make a little note and i would stop being repeatedly asked.
not a single time was that risk explained to me. the only reason it came up was because i already knew. i still don't understand why it isn't standard pre-op counseling or pre-op check information, when me as a parent acknowledging the actual risk also put THE MEDICAL STAFF at ease because i conveyed that i had informed understanding as reason to not lie about giving my kid food.
"maybe some people will get nervous and refuse surgery" okay so they need more counseling about risks and anxiety, not less information in a way that actually does endanger their child or themselves!
ROOKIES ARE NOT MAKING "MORE MONEY THAN THEY EVER IMAGINED" BECAUSE 1) THEY DID NOT STUMBLE INTO THE NHL THEY HAVE BEEN DREAMING ABOUT THIS THEIR ENTIRE LIVES 2) ELCs START AT 750K A YEAR, THAT IS A LOT OF MONEY YES, BUT ALSO THAT IS AN IMAGINABLE AMOUNT OF MONEY, EVEN IF THEY GET A CHUNKY FIRST CONTRACT THAT IS STILL AN IMAGINABLE AMOUNT OF MONEY!!!!!
this is a canon nitpick not a how hockey works nitpick, but..... Shane won 2 cups with Montreal, Ilya won 1 cup with Boston, together they have three COMBINED cups, BUT neither Ilya NOR Shane are winning their INDIVIDUAL FOURTH CUP while on the centaurs (unless you've written them already winning a cup while on the cens) because 2+1=3 (Shane) and 1+1=2 (Ilya)
if you're going to make your own names for teams that aren't mentioned in the book or show awesome! maybe just like.... check the list of NHL teams first???? because uhhhh......
SHANE HOLLANDER AND ILYA ROZANOV DO NOT HAVE ROAD ROOMMATES AT THEIR BIG AGE!!!!!! THE NHLPA BARGANED THAT OUT OF EXISTENCE (except for players on ently level contracts) IN TWENTY FUCKING THIRTEEN!!!!!! this inaccuracy is unforch reinforced by the show and the book which has Ilya rooming with Connors and Shane rooming with Hayden long after their ELCs would've been done. HOWEVER I am choosing to believe that the book and show is NOT inaccurate, but simply that the NHLPA is somehow even more useless in the game changer universe than it is in our universe.
Neither shane nor ilya nor scott nor troy not hayden nor ryan nor nor nor nor will ever ever and i mean EVERRRRR win SEVEN (7) STANLEY CUPS! That is not happening in this universe, or the game changer universe! that is not how the sport of hockey has worked in DECADES PLURAL!!!!! there are nine (9) players TOTAL who have won seven (7) Stanley cups and the last time any of those bitches won was..... NINETEEN SEVENTY NINE (1979)!!!!!!!!!!!!
weeknight hockey games typically start at 7pm and end at 9:30ish plus showering, media, and commute, Hayden Pike is getting home LONG after his children have gone to bed.
general managers are NOT coaches and VICE VERSA (troy ryan is an idiot and should not be looked to for inspiration) coaches don't make trades! and gms don't run practices!!! (NEITHER DO THE CAPTAINS!!!!!)
holy shit prev you're right shane did win a 3rd cup in montreal and i forgot because it's barely fucking mentioned in the books, and we DON'T SEE IT HAPPEN IN EITHER OF SHANE AND ILYA'S!!! IT GETS A THROWAWAY LINE IN THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE LONG GAME AND THAT'S IT!!!!!!
^ THAT'S IT!!! okay well it also gets mentioned a bit in ch4 because they bring the cup to the camp, but like STILL!!!! shane won a whole ass cup OFF OF THE PAGE?!?!?!
I do stand by the "ilya isn't winning his fourth cup" comment, because that incorrect fact is what lead me to write that addition to the post. Ilya has won one (1) cup.
they aren't organizing whole team PR events for the second week of july!!! during second week of july at most only the guys with families are in town!!!! EVERYONE ELSE IS ON VACATION!!!!!!
and also THE PLAYOFFS ARE DONE BY JULY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Baby eridians, for a good portion of their lives, are soft-shelled, as Erid likes to call it. It takes a few molts (more than a few, but for abbreviation's sake) for their shells to entirely harden, absorbing minerals from around them and through their food to develop the shell on their exterior. If you need a comparison, consider how human bones fuse and we become less flexible as we get older.
But for a few years (cough, decades, cough), a baby pebble is about as hard as a soft-shelled turtle—or a normal turtle, if they're a bit older. Disadvantages aside, there is an advantage to being able to see your offspring's internal functions. And until their vocal bladders form and they're capable of making multiple complex sounds, being able to see what is hurting is absolutely helpful.
It's a universal experience among parents to lament the day they can no longer hear their pebbles' heartbeats.
That is to say, Rocky knows Grace is an adult, okay? He isn't someone who anthropomorphizes, and he isn't going to start now. Statement.
But when he first heard Grace in all his squishy glory— heart pumping away, lungs filling and deflating, organs digesting food— his brain went full baby-fever mode. Frankly, he was white-knuckling the urge to find the nearest hypothetical cave, bundle him up into a proper nest, and wait for his skin to absorb the surrounding minerals and start hardening properly.
But because Rocky is sensible and proper and not going to infantilize his best friend (he swears to God, stupid fucking instincts, shut the fuck up!!), he won't.
But sometimes the urge to squish his best friend is overwhelming. He just pinches at him through the permeable mesh of his ball. And Grace will screw up his face (so soft) and go what’s up bud? I piss you off or something? (He learns what bruises are and sulks for half a day afterward.)
All of that aside, once again, Rocky has gotten used to Grace's heartbeat, his clumsiness, and his one-tone voice. That's his best friend, and he's smart and just as capable as any other adult. He is also the cutest fucking thing to Eridian hearing. Is he also disconcertingly alien, definitely— His size, the limbs, the head protrusion (and other protrusions), the leakiness detracted maybe. But his cluster-sibling once cooed at and brought home a pet sulphur slug because, oh my spirits, hear his squishy respiratory system and you tell me that's not the cutest thing on the planet! It blurbles, Rocky! It fucking blurbles!
So, as Erid draws closer and Rocky/Grace become more excited and stressed. (The food has yet to run out, and as good as Erid is, they need substantial help from the human side to figure out how to make proper human nutrition. And finding the right informational packs in all of human knowledge is a very big undertaking.)
Rocky dreads the ever-looming talk he’ll need to have with Grace about the fact that Erid may, in fact, possibly find him very, very adorable. And that this might hamper communication for a second while he explains no, that is not a tall baby and no you cannot squish it.
Out of all the heated rivalry analysis I’ve seen I’ve never seen someone mention that after the all star game Shane no longer drafts and deletes texts. He says what he intends to say the first time and stops editing and second guessing himself and it’s one of my favorite details showing that their dynamic has changed and no one talks about it
Oh, so the entire Game Changers series is set in a fictional hockey setting where several things are different from Real Life, and that's why you should accept how it is. Okay.
However, one sentence from a post that @teddywesworl made me really understand why I could never do that. Jas says in a March 25 post that "The obvious problem is of course that when you bring real world events into your fictionalized NHL, you are now open to continued comparisons that you may never have intended, in particular for a very old club with deep roots in a marginalized culture to which you, the author, do not belong."
So this is going to be a long rant, gays, girls, and squirrels. Continue when you have time.
SO, in this setting, the cap exists, and Montreal (the gay hockey capital of the world) doesn't give a shit about the Shane Hollander (gay hockey Jesus) being run out of their team, and in HR Ilya purposely doesn't consider going to Montreal because he wants to be paid what he's worth and keep his captaincy and have his career + citizenship, while in TLG that choice is rewritten as if he did it for "love" only. The first time that Ottawa is brought up as a terrible team is in My Dinner With Hayden, by the way.
And when Shane does the same thing with wanting to stay in Montreal for his career and keep his captaincy - well - you are such a selfish pos for that, ofc; how could you not choose the man you love over being seen as a diversity hire who got too diverse and needed to hide behind your boyfriend, haha.
And obviously Shane didn't go through any actual terrible homophobia from his team until the tripping incident; that's why we don't get a Shane POV of him coming out to the team, or anything about how his coach took it, or the staff in the entire Montreal organization. If there wasn't any big problem, then why is Shane so jumpy about being outed? Well, it's just because he is such a high-strung guy and a bad boyfriend, ofc. Shane doesn't have trauma; only Ilya does (RR said it!), which obviously means that racism and the entirety of Canadian junior hockey doesn't fucking exist in this universe, haha.
It's really not important, after all; Ilya is going through such a terrible time with depression, guys. Shane is holding out on him on purpose to make sure Ilya is suffering as much as possible!! You don't understand; it's not like Shane actively dissociates to ensure that he is able to Get Through the Hard Times. It's not like he believed his boyfriend when Ilya lied to his face and made Shane doubt his own intuition that the signs of his depression were actually a big deal haha.
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RR's list of character traits for Ilya and Shane also contributes to how disgustingly TLG is written btw.
An excellent blog that talks about the sheer insanity of what happens to Shane (and Ilya's characterization) in TLG is @polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup
from one of Syn's posts:
["One of the many Rachel Reid controversies around the writing of these books is that she posted a list of character traits that were the core guidelines of writing Shane and Ilya. Most of shane’s traits were just defined as like, the absence of whatever Ilya’s trait was. “Ilya is cool, Shane is not. Ilya carries grief and trauma, Shane does not. Ilya is very intelligent, Shane is not,” etc.
Shane got a few actual traits though. One was that he was obsessed with hockey, whereas Ilya was not. He was described as being very private and cautious about letting people in, whereas Ilya seeks intimacy from everyone. And Ilya is extremely perceptive, whereas Shane barely notices his own feelings."]
So, all the signs that Shane was observant enough to catch in HR & TLG whenever Ilya couldn't explain his feelings out loud, but RR needed Shane to figure out how Ilya was feeling, apparently don't matter enough to his characterization because in the second half of TLG, Shane randomly turns unobservant and "stupid". Because Shane is not intelligent, Ilya is. And Shane is not cool; Ilya is. Shane is not selfless; Ilya is. Shane is not white or neurotypical or the author's special little sad boi.
Shane has so few characteristics that are just about him, and not just that he is the absence of Ilya's traits. He gets: love of hockey, love of privacy, being cautious with his trust (which makes it more precious that he gave Ilya his trust - and annoys me when RR uses Hayden as a conflict starter for no reason), and he is characterized as a person who, once he understands exactly what he wants, makes sure it happens.
So in total, we have: hockey lover, privacy lover, cautious dude, go-getter. This is Rachel Reid's Shane Hollander, everybody.
So in a Watsonian analysis: TLG is a fucking mess.
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And Harris being with Troy and doing all that cute PDA together in TLG. How cute it is, especially in front of all of their coworkers and in their professional lives. But ofc Hollanov would be the ones who need a PDA jar in fanfic. right. right. And Shane, Mr. Professional, Mr. I Do Not Want Others To Perceive Me Or My Relationships, would be so not embarrassed of this and super comfy with his husband's team he had to sign with after his entire professional career was blown up because it's his HEA. right.
And also, Troy Barrett definitely never said or agreed with anything racist said around him because it was never written into the books; only homophobia exists in this universe, DUH... which ofc means that there is no reason for Shane to be a little wary of Ilya randomly coming out to Troy in TLG. He is just a jealous little guy haha.
Because Troy (white + rehabilitated image like crazy style) and Harris (white + the one who dedicated his time to rehabilitate Troy's image crazy style) get their HEA after Troy comes out and Harris is promoted.
Because Scott (white + rich) and Kip (white + educated) get their HEA where they are The Gay Couple of hockey.
Because Ryan (white + retired) and Fabian (Lebanese-Canadian + "glamourous") get their HEA after making up and escaping hockey.
(Also, Fabian barely gets any attention to his race either; it's mostly an excuse to have him be “beautiful” and “golden-skinned.”)
Because Eric (white + retired) and Kyle (white + non-hockey) get their HEA after figuring out how to trust each other.
So happy ever afters that are kind to both halves of a couple exist.
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Ilya Rozanov (white with a background apparently excellently researched and written + a known, successful captain who led his former team to the Stanley Cup once and rebuilt Ottawa to proper playoff contenders in 2-3 years) helps each of these couples understand themselves or sees their struggles in a crucial moment several times, as he is characterized as an empath.
And yet, he suddenly lost all of that empathy when he said he was happy his husband's, Shane Hollander (Asian-Canadian + very successful captain who led his team to 3 Stanley Cups), career was blown up, with several jokes being made about it. What the actual fuck happened in RR's fingertips for this bullshit to be written and brushed off because "its just a romance book" & "you shouldn't take things so seriously in this genre."
No. I'm going to take it seriously.
If this book is supposed to be escapism, then who can escape when Shane is hatecrimed and gaslit, Ilya becomes a terrible partner, Hayden is just a plot device to make you think that Ilya has a terrible reputation that no one can use their brain to look through, Galina is a plot device to make Ilya look like he's trying to get better & to put the "would Shane choose you over hockey" question into his head, and JJ is a black man who apparently doesn't understand why his Asian-Canadian captain doesn't want to put more diversity into his image???
And @lesbianroselandry had a great July 4 post where they said TLG "...includes multiple passages in which rachel reid posits that a bunch of white queer people understand bigotry in hockey culture better than a qpoc in hockey (because he's, like, too autistic to get it or something??),..." which also brings me back to Ilya for some reason (*cough* RR *cough*) thinks that Shane doesn't understand the dark side of hockey.
Pardon? Shane Hollander, who grew up as Canada's golden Hockey Jesus, doesn't know the dark side of Canadian Hockey? Just fucking kill me already.
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Shane Hollander did not get a HEA by the end of TLG, and no one will be able to brainwash me into thinking that he did. He can be written to tell himself to accept that what he got is the best he can get in the book-universe, but he is not a person - he is a character. I am a person who can read everything in that series and think critically about how the minority character - who is in a rivalry and relationship with the white man who benefits from his slashed career - is the one who got cheated out of a HEA. Because even in a fucking unrealistic universe where hockey doesn't work like that, racism fucking prevails. He is the one who had to settle. He is the one who didn't get what he wanted (his jersey in the rafters, his team supporting him, and Ilya as his husband). He gets a paltry fate as a second-liner, with a rookie and Tanner Dillon (who has been said to suck as a winger). He gets jokes about how he'll never get the C, even though he will always have more Cups than the fucker who laughed at that joke. He doesn't even get the A. Are you kidding me? His pay is cut. "Good thing that your husband can take care of you as the breadwinner 😂" No. Absolutely not. Shane is literally being forced into the wife role. He is being destroyed in his career, moving to his husband's gay utopia where they laugh at him too, and whenever he brings up feeling a bit sad, his empathetic husband talks about fucking the bad feelings out of him. What the fuck.
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Also?
SHANE IS A GREAT CAPTAIN. No, he isn't written as someone screaming speeches at his team to hype them up, but you know what he did do? He is trusted and liked by his team, so he is invited out again and again, despite however many times he declines. He is a hard worker, diligent, particular, and a great hockey player who elevates the game. He put together a team of large egos, mostly white teammates who undoubtedly gave him a hard time, dealt with an old-fashioned coach, and dragged them to the playoffs every year he was a captain. He is Ilya Rozanov's equal on every level, at minimum, not just what people want to pick and choose from.
No, the fact that Shane's teammates turned on him doesn't mean he didn't cultivate enough good-fucking-will in the locker room. It means they were homophobic enough to betray the person who toiled over their progress and work ethic and brought them to a level of excellence that got them 3 fucking Cups. Stop blaming the gay guy for the homophobia of the people around him. Parents will abandon their children on the streets, send their children to conversion camps, and allow their children to be raped or tortured because of homophobia. The Montreal Voyageurs loved Shane Hollander when they thought he was a great leader and straight. They allowed their homophobia to destroy that. If loving someone enough could stop homophobes, then the fucking closet wouldn't be a thing. Stop acting like Shane was in the wrong for any of that, including trusting the men he loved like family for 10 years.
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I have so much more to say (not even including side character 😭, and especially about how Yuna is also turned into a plot device to make Shane look super selfish after Ryan Price catches Shane & Ilya, but I'm actually steaming right now, so I'll reblog this with more when I can.
A final word would be that @ravenbytes had a great take in her March 26 post (you can tell just how long I've been chewing on this idea lol), where she said that, "We can’t simply forget that the Doylist perspective exists, and it is crucial that we consider that perspective before ripping a character to shreds for their mistakes. As such, the author has a responsibility to their story to ensure narrative clarity, consistency, and coherence in theme, tone, and character alongside plot progression."
The book can be fun and/or impactful for any reader who isn't bothered by the bigotry or implicit biases of the author. For me, this is like talking about Harry Potter and how JKR very obviously names her POC characters with the most racist option "on accident." If RR isn't racist, then she can at least admit that her subconscious is driving the wheel and crashing her writing into every fucking racist stereotype.
Sure, Jan. Keep enjoying the crack fics and sucking on the grand cock of racism and all the other ism/phobia's.
I'm just gonna slide this on in here for anyone that is interested in preserving old games. They take it very seriously too, they want an archive of every single game. Like, they have lists of every game ever released for a system, and once that system gets old enough, they add it to their archive and start collecting. Their latest addition was the Xbox 360, they opened that vault up in September 2022, and proudly announced they'd finished their collection of games for it back in April.
Also, while their game archives are almost entirely complete, they've got another project of archiving the manuals that came with those games, and that is... considerably less well filled out. Their collection of Xbox 360 manuals is especially rough, they've only gotten manuals for three games. So if you've got some Xbox 360 games kicking around, and the manual's still with them, please consider scanning them and submitting them to the site!
Game preservation is important, but people rarely consider preserving the manuals as well; I really respect Vimm's Lair for being so thorough in their archival work.
I've been using Vimm's Lair for years, I have yet to see a single bad link or virus on the entire site. It's arguably the safest and most comprehensive archive of video games in existence. Preserved history
Revolting little machine I hope someone guy fawkeses you too.
(Context: was trying to find the text of a version of the Guy Fawkes poem which ends 'are we glad that they stopped him or not?' Was not expecting this thing to run defence for the UK parliament 400 years ago)
Btw, if you ever wanted an indicator of the ideological censorship that now exists, and how pervasive it has become? The poem I was looking for, with its implication that maybe it might not have been a bad thing to blow up parliament way back when, was published in a children's book two decades ago. Without incident. Now I can't even SEARCH for that poem without receiving a telling off for its contents.
why is there an upgrade button on gmail. why does twitter want me to scan my palm to get into my account. why is google a chatbot. why does the transit app make a transit app wrapped for me. why does youtube keep shoving its infinitely scrollable shortform content down my throat. why do my doctor and psychiatrist and therapist want to use an ai notetaker during our appointments. why do free trials want my credit card number. why are most scholarship websites just data brokers. how do i make capitalone stop sending me mail. why is my school making its own special chat gpt powered chatbot. why is every third video on instagram an undisclosed ad. why is nothing online real anymore. why is everything so FUCKING STUPID
sometimes you see Takes™ that make you go "mmmhmmm okay yeah i see we both interpreted that differently based on what the show gave us, but i see how you arrived at your ideas even if they're different from mine," and then sometimes you see Takes™ that make you go "brother what show did you even fucking watch"
yes i live like this @padawanduck - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
