(Gonna be honest this blog exists mostly so I can find things later.) I’ve given up on writing my dissertation. Instead, I overthink my dnd characters and stare at pictures of space. Specific fandoms are tagged to the best of my attention span for filtering purposes.
my final heated rivalry thought of the night is i do genuinely think it exists in this weird space of requiring you to both be a hockey fan and not know anything about hockey. schrodinger's hockey fan. you need to know about hockey because half the stakes aren't really explained to you at all. see: hockey culture/homophobia. see: the montreal-boston rivalry's unique significance. etc. but you also need to not know anything about hockey because if you do then you look at the long game and go: montreal would not do that. ottawa would also not do that. also why are the 1oa and 2oa going to world juniors twice. why is no one throwing hands at ilya for being that close to their injured captain on the ice.
what people fail to understand is that in the current political and social climate if we are truly going to support lesbians during pride month we need to be paying better attention to lesbian-specific issues. like the psychological and emotional distress caused by the PWHL expansion protocol.
For the fourth year in a row now, it's time for Small Fandom Summer! Join me for Small Fandom Summer! It's real easy to play:
Make a fanwork for something that has fewer than 1000 English-language works on AO3
Post it to AO3
And then you've done it! You've made a thing and you've diversified the fandom ecosystem! You're basically a hero.
Q: The fandom I want to create for has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but the specific pairing I want to write for has fewer than that. Does that count?
A: Yes!
Q: What if it has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but, like, just barely?
A: Okay!
Q: What if it actually has a lot more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but it still feels small?
A: Sure!
Q: What if I don't want to post it to AO3? What if I don't even have an AO3 account? Can I post it somewhere else?
A: Wherever!
Q: What if--
A: Just do a thing, friend. Make a thing. Share the thing. This is not meant to be restrictive; this is meant to be inspirational. Create the fanworks you want to see in the world. Make a stranger happy by appealing to their niche interests. Bring joy.
And if you want to give yourself some silly little Steam-like achievement badges to commemorate your accomplishments, well, you're in luck! I've made a bunch of them right here! You can grab the ones that apply to your work and paste them wherever you like and feel good about what you've done. Here's a few of my favorites:
So you see? This is meant to be silly and fun.
There's nowhere to sign up. There's nothing to commit to. There's zero pressure. You just do it if you do it, and don't if you don't. But if you do want to play (yay!), tag your stuff with #small fandom summer so we can all swoop in and appreciate everyone else's efforts.
Since some people have asked: There's now a Small Fandom Summer 2026 AO3 Collection! You can post your stuff right here! It's completely open and unmoderated, so if you think something goes there, well, go on and add it! Hopefully by the end of the summer, we'll have a nice little collection of stuff there.
And since some other people have asked: There's no start date for this, nor is this an end date. "Summer" in this context is an extremely arbitrary unit of measurement. I'm starting now because my personal summer runs from about mid-May to mid-August. Yours may vary.
I'm thrilled so many people have seemed excited about this! I hope it inspires the creation of a whole bunch of good stuff!
About the geopolitical implications of Shane and Ilya coming out, the show has painted itself into a huge corner with Svetlana. She's the daughter of a (former?) Russian minister. We can safely assume her dad is definitely one of Putin's oligarchs. She regularly goes back home. Ilya coming out would paint a huge target on her back as well and put her in a great amount of danger. She wouldn't be able to go back home either.
So now you have Ilya wanting to come out despite this putting two POCs in danger. I'm really curious how they're going to handle this because the implications are bleak as hell.
There's also the matter of Ilya's brother and niece who would probably end up as political prisoners/pawns in Putin's game of one upmanship.
The more I think on it, the crazier it gets with their coming out. Suddenly, the entire continent of Europe would care about hockey so they can make memes about whether Ilya has fucked Putin or whether Putin has sucked Ilya's dick. There would be songs, sketches and endless commentary. JD Vance the couch fucker or Trump/Clinton would be peanuts in comparison.
Shane, Ilya, (show) Svetlana and everyone near them would have targets on their backs for the rest of their lives. The Long Game makes no fucking sense. Ilya would know all this. People from former Soviet/communist countries live in constant fear of the state. It's been 36 years since the fall of the Berlin wall and my parents are still cautioning me against saying too much against the government, even in the privacy of my own home. And I'm not even Russian, it's way worse over there.
Having citizenship certainly helps but it doesn't mean Ilya's safe from political repercussions. I am losing my mind thinking about it. Sorry if I'm not making sense but it's so crazy to me how Rachel has glossed over all of this so Ilya can throw a tantrum cause his boyfriend won't go with him to a party.
I really do wish we saw more about just who Ilya Rozanov is in Russia because it has the potential to inform so much of the conflict.
Canon suggests that Ilya is a big deal in Russia. He is the captain of their Olympic team at a very young age. They pick him over every single athlete actively playing in the KHL. His family is politically connected. He is personally and publicly linked to Putin’s Minister of Sport, and he is attending functions with him and his family while people go “wow, wouldn’t it be great if Ilya married his daughter?”
Again, hockey is very tied to Russian state propaganda. Hockey players are used to promote a sense of nationalism. Ilya has very likely been plastered over state propaganda for years. He has likely been photographed with Putin himself. Sincerely, what the fuck happens if the guy you’ve been pushing as the nationalist ideal citizens should aspire to defects from the goddamn country to go make passionate gay love to Canada’s own special hockey boy?
It would be very embarrassing for the Russian government. Legitimately, I have no idea what would happen. I don’t personally see them just taking it lying down.
And I think the conflict grows more interesting in the the sense that I think that canon is at least open to the interpretation that Ilya’s family purposefully pushed his hockey career as a political measure.
Canon suggests that Shane is someone who entered hockey out of genuine love for the sport, and that led him to achieve at a high level, and he ended up getting promoted because of that. But it also suggests that Ilya was someone who exhibited a talent for the sport and did not have much choice in pursuing it. His family was in control of his life, career, and training. His family was the driving force behind his career, and they continued to exert control over it even after he joins the NHL.
Why does his family do that?
The easiest interpretation is that it’s just about money. He is their golden goose and their cash cow and they will milk him fucking dry. But that interpretation is interesting in the sense that his family already seems to have money.
His brother has money troubles, to be clear, but that’s different from his family having money troubles. His brother may just not have access to the family accounts, and his brother was not the one to make the initial decision to push Ilya’s hockey career. That was most likely his father. And he doesn’t seem to have money troubles—I can’t even remember a time in canon where he asks Ilya for money.
Like. He lives in a fucking estate. His family home is palatial. That’s not mutually exclusive with money troubles—maybe it’s generational wealth that’s started to run dry—but I think canon’s at least open to the interpretation that the decision to pursue Ilya’s hockey career was not initially about the money. And I personally like the interpretation that the family saw it as a way to potentially climb the political and social ladder.
Sergei Vetrova achieved at a high level in hockey and became Putin’s Minister of Sport. And Russian hockey players are an important part of state propaganda. If they have a family member who’s succeeding in that space, that may be a way to integrate themselves even further with the government’s leadership. Here’s my son and his historical talent—put him on your posters, make him the captain of your Olympic team, tell the whole country to be like him. There is political capital that comes with that. I personally like the interpretation that Ilya was pushed so hard to achieve in part because his family saw an opportunity to exploit his ability for their own careers and social status.
And Ilya would know that. It would inform why he doesn’t want to come out or risk pursuing a real relationship with Shane in heated rivalry perfectly. But it cheapens all of his later actions in the long game.
I just. I have trouble reconciling Ilya’s actions in the long game with his character. His trauma from his family and his treatment in Russia is a bedrock of his character and his motivations. His actions just don’t make sense to me if you just rip that away.
Putting the term "Catholic guilt" on a high shelf where fandom can't reach it until everyone learns how to identify characters who are very very clearly coded as Protestant.
unfinished thoughts, im not done thinking about this, but there's a fun little bit of mental gymnastics people (nerds) in certain online (fandom) spaces do about athletes where they justify villainizing or dehumanizing them based on an assumption of universal moral failure. it was present in that sharks pfp saying it was good the habs lost because they're all cheating on their girlfriends (inspiring a dozen questions: they are? all of them? the habs but not the canes? how do we know this? etc.), and it's present in the justification given when you press on a heated rivalry fan who reeeeally wants to call nick suzuki shane hollander.
with the sharks pfp, it's within the bubble of sports fandom, where there's an expectation of us vs. them mentality. however, there's a difference between shall we say a recreational us vs. them mentality (thank you @filthyjanuary for referring to the boston bruins as our brothers in a cain and abel way) as opposed to genuine vitriol based on real or perceived moral infraction. And, you know, sometimes it's a very real and very hideous moral infraction. Milan Lucic. Patrick Kane. Carter Hart. and so on. but sometimes there appears to be an urge to expand the perception of moral infraction to include all players, all athletes, all jocks, rhetorically flattening the whole nhl into a sort of homogeneous sludge of equally debased villains in order to give one the excuse to hate whomever one wants to hate while feeling righteous about it. detachment and broad condemnation as a form of pre-emptive self-defense, both external and internal.
with the hr fans calling nick shane, it's people outside sports looking in, with the same homogeneous sludge of equally debased villains, but without the specificity. they're not necessarily thinking "it's okay to dehumanize a real jock, because real jocks are problematic," but it may come through in the form of "it's so much safer to love/admire a fictional jock than a real one" and then metastasize from there into dehumanizing behavior.
is this anything? it's definitely incomplete & im sure i will continue to rotate it
A lot of this feels like an extension of the idea that “hey I love my team the most,” which means i love them better than any other team, which then means that they ARE better than any other team, not necessarily their win loss record. But they’re morally superior to any other team. Because I love them, and I’m a good person.
I’m not sure the average sports fan spends a lot of time figuring out if they can love something flawed; it’s way easier to not think about it (which means sloppy entailments can sneak in).
And once you add in the very real instances of shitty behavior, it’s easy in that not thinking about it way, to decide that My Team is the only good one (because I love them, and I’m a good person), and now bonus, I get to feel like I’ve cut off the argument from a non sports person (yes Hockey Players are bad, but My Team are the good ones).
And also, it’s a matter of degree, or maybe matter of attitude difference, between recreational us-vs-them as opposed to this idea that anyone not on My Team are by definition Bad Guys. And once playoffs hit and My Team are out, well i need a new Team until next season. And so My Temporary Team are granted goodness while the team that knocked us out, or is getting good press, or whatever, gets granted special Bad Guy status.
Because on the surface, a lot of that is pretty normal sports stuff. I cannot tell you how much I resented the LA Kings this year. (My pathetic hockey team should have been the one to be swept by the Avs in the first round! Good for the Avs for taking the Kings down a notch!) It’s only when you find yourself deciding that all the Habs are adulterers (holy shit WHAT) that it gets clearer that Something is going on here, but it can be pretty muddy, right?
And it doesn’t seem like most of this is conscious. Because this is all just sports stuff, no big deal, I just watch it to unwind. No need to think about it too much. I’m a good person. I love My Team.
Also tbh to me the Nick Suzuki-Shane Hollander stuff feels intensely like breaking the RPF Barrier. The thought fills me with the same cringing horror as a lot of the worst of the Phan harassment, or my bestie trying to send Gerard way her MCR fic in like 2007. That is a fandom activity that should not reach creators/actors/players, holy shit.
It feels parasocial in an interesting new way (yikes!). Like yes this is an intensely dehumanizing behavior, and I think that you’re right that the "it's so much safer to love/admire a fictional jock than a real one" plays a part. But everyone. Wait, sorry, most people who ship/are involved in RPF have to struggle/think about this distance between the character, the persona, and the actual person. But if you’re thinking about Shane Hollander, you don’t need to worry that! And adding in Nick Suzuki to the mix doesn’t seem to trigger the “please apply RPF etiquette” even though it really should! For reasons that include the above dehumanization discussion.
(Though it seems like the RPF Barrier is less prevalent in fandom spaces, god I’m getting old.)
Note to self: maybe come back and take a second pass at this when you’re not pretending to be doing your job.
i'm celebrating Indigenous hockey players making history for #NIHM2026
i feel so lucky to follow a sport that is finally recognizing the incredible impact and legacy of these athletes
initatives and orgs:
https://www.hockeyindigenous.com
https://smudgetheblades.com
https://www.aboriginalsportcircle.ca/
https://www.theiropportunity.com/indigenoushockeyequipmentdrive
I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter was one of the best works of sci-fi of our generation and one of the best works of transgender fiction ever written, and there are world renowned authors who still have successful careers after they publicly assassinated the nascent woman who wrote it. I don't think they should ever know peace.
I think this constantly and then I get angry for thinking it, because trans women should not have to be martyrs or saints to animate our politics and our art. that work should have been her debut, not her epitaph. I should be moved by her career, not her absence. I could spit.
