yours is a system of slow, that earliest of wheels
@snowlikestardust
they/them. i follow/reply from @gothamapologist. if you rely on a screen reader, block the tag “undescribed.” [header id: a purple skyline/forest-scape painting by holly warburton. icon id: a simplistic, line-drawn mountain with stars and the moon above it, drawn by the artist lvnnsi.]
if we can set aside attachment discourse for a moment (please) i think the jedi marriage prohibition makes sense in a “please don’t enter a complex legal, financial, social, and in some cases religious contract, the specifics of which vary wildly depending on planet and culture” way. the single jedi with a law degree does not have time to draft everyone’s prenups to prevent the whole order from getting sued
#we could create so many interesting new problems if we ignore romance and make it about contracts generally#jedi prohibition on getting a loan. jedi prohibition on signing a waiver before bungee jumping. etc
"Qui-Gon didn't try to buy Anakin or the engine because there wasn't anyone in town who offered a credit exchange service" wrong. Qui-Gon gambled for Anakin under the table because after dealing with the Cyrkon Delinquency of 24850, Master Olobi, Esq, has personally promised to hang by the the toes from the highest tower of the Temple for one week any Jedi who generates any trackable legal transaction or obligation between the Order and the Hutts.
I have such a visceral reaction to fandom acting like Kakashi was wrong, or worse, piteous for all the time he spent at the Memorial Stone. It genuinely makes me lose my mind and this take is EVERYWHERE.
Naruto (the story, not the boy. but also the boy) is about how love is never wrong. It's never wasted and it doesn't have to be deserved. To then turn around and paint Kakashi's love and devotion to Obito and Rin as stupid and shameful is ????
Rin and Obito represent two lives that were ended too soon, two children who died in a bloody war they should never have been in. Kakashi mourns them, and continues to mourn them years after their death (supposed, in Obito's case) because they were his friends and he loved them, they were his comrades that he fought a war with and they died because they were cannon fodder for an ever-churning war machine.
Kakashi's refusal to "let go" and "move on" is, I would argue, a radical act. It is an extension of his those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum ideology. In a world that treats children as expendable soldiers, cheap and replacable, Kakashi refuses to see his fallen comrades like that. He carries them with him because they weren't expendable. Not to him and not to the people who loved them. By going to the Memorial Stone, Kakashi keeps his teammates memory alive. By continuing to mourn them, he does not let them be forgotten, just another couple of names in a sea of dead. They were people, they had lives and dreams and hopes and now he is the only keeper of their memory. Even in death, he will not abandon his comrades.
And this choice is vindicated!! This is what gets me the most!! Not only is Kakashi keeping Obito and Rin's (and his father's!!) memory alive by passing on Obito and Sakumo's nindo what eventually leads to Naruto saving the world, but it is personally vindicated too!! because Obito comes back to their side!!! Kakashi's love and faith and devotion all these years were not misplaced!! Obito gets to die a hero a second time because Kakashi raised children who held to Obito's ideals and he was only able to do that because of how closely he held Obito and Rin's memory and sacrifice.
At the end of the day, I think people criticize Kakashi for paying "too much" tribute to the dead because they think it made him a bad teacher or because he "lived in the past," and I just don't think either of those things is true but I guess that's for another day.
But yeah, to conclude, tl:dr, Kakashi's visits to the memorial stone are emblematic of his commitment to honouring his teammates and keeping their memory alive, a choice that is ultimately vindicated by the narrative and to paint it as pathetic/short-sighted/unwarranted goes against the themes of the show. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
there's ship of theseus shepard but there's also cassandra shepard, cursed to never be believed despite the true prophecies she shares. she's cursed with the prothean beacon and foresees the destruction of the galaxy, images burned into the backs of her eyelids and is told she has baseless claims. will you help me? she asks the council, and the council says they need more evidence. will you help me? she asks the council and their hands are tied. she stops saren but there are whispers maybe she could have done more, and she bites her tongue because she believes that too, but the council could have done more. the reapers are coming, and they say, sure, say, they aren't real, don't you know that? will you help me? she asks and they send her to the far reaches of the galaxy, a spectre sent on errands. she and the normandy do not come back. but then she does, commander and ship rebuilt anew, not meant to exist but here all the same. will you help me? she asks the council, and they tell her she does not exist, what proof does she have of these claims? the colonies of one species cannot be the concerns of all. she bites her tongue and her mouth swims with blood. the reapers are coming, and they say, no they aren't, say, you need to stop saying that. the spectre floats through space with a crew who never quite looks her in the eye, but they follow regardless. the dead leading the dying. they do not expect to come back from this. will you help me? she asks, and they say, we are here. the collectors are a real threat, barely leaving ghosts behind, and they greet her because she is familiar, isn't she. she isn't supposed to be here either. the reapers are coming she warns, and they say, you have said this for years, why should we trust you? will you help me? she asks and the alliance says there isn't much they can do but she must answer for her actions. will you help me? she asks and let her sit in solitude, think of what she has done, what she has claimed. images burned into the backs of her eyelids and the reapers are here. will you help us? the galaxy asks, and she says what else would i do?
dont get me started on mordin solus's speech patterns and his refusal to use personal pronouns, most notably when discussing genophage modification, until right before he dies and for the first time starts a sentence with i. dont get me started. full accountability right at the end. no sugarcoating, no deflecting, no rambling. i made a mistake. and then he repeats it. i made a mistake. as if even he cant believe he admitted it out loud, as if it feels so foreign on his tongue. dont even start to gas me up, brenda. dont even think about mentioning that the only time he gets close to a personal pronoun in reference to the genophage is when he talks about his team, calls them "we" as a unit, never to do it again as soon as he realizes the maelon defected. shut your fucking mouth. don't do it. don't say a goddamn word about it. if you even think about discussing how mordin has depersonalized himself so much from the trauma that came with his work that it even bled into the way he talks for the rest of his life, ill fucking lose my mind.
It's never not funny that the entire planet of Illium knew Thane Krios' full government name, race, and his NEXT TARGET and still couldn't do anything about it. Everyone you ask is like "Thane Krios? Oh you mean our local assassin? Yeah he's here somewhere. I think he's after Nassana."
He's Illium's open secret in the way that Archangel was Omega's, but at least Garrus took steps to protect his identity. Thane was quite possibly the only drell on the planet. Walking around in that outfit of all things.
God I love Wrex. He's genuinely so insightful. Whenever I took him with me he's nearly ALWAYS the one who knew before it was obvious that we were heading into an ambush or that something wasn't quite right. When we met Vigil Wrex was the one who said as we headed down that he didn't think what was happening was Sarens doing. He says he knew Saren wasn't a good guy when he met him prior to the events of the game and he met him once for a few minutes. He speaks about only being good for fighting; but he was genuinely trying to do something about the genophage before he had to leave his planet AND he still DEEPLY cares about trying to fix it now even if he tells you it's a lost cause because krogans are too focused on other things. He claims his species is best at war and not things like science but he's just!! So clever and he clearly KNOWS on some level that a lot of what the Krogan experience is is based on their subjection/treatment in the galaxy. He enjoys jobs where his opponent is smart and good at what they do; and he is smart enough to be crafty and manipulate individuals such as when he got an employer to pay him to be a guard even AFTER he failed to kill the guy he was sent after. He is grumpy, but he cares about Shepard and he cares about stopping Saren. He's cynical and not sure that things can change for the better but he's also got this little nugget of hope in him that comes out so strongly at times. I love him. Best alien. Smart little guy. Best friend.
God I love how ME2 is filled with people who were MANUFACTURED. MADE. DEVELOPED LIKE MACHINES. Shepards a multi-billion credit product. Miranda was genetically engineered to be perfect. Jack was an experiment. You have to let Grunt out of his test tube. what a fun team to go up against evil machines; against Geth and against the Reapers. How apt. How terrifying. So many implications.
saw a post about how Mass Effect gave Shepard the Spectre title in the first game, then killed them off and brought them back in the next, rendering Shepard a literal walking, talking, touchable ghost that haunts their own life
but like. it is crazy that Shepard is specifically a vengeful ghost with unfinished business.
Shepard fended off the first Reaper attack, and is killed before they can stop the actual threat. Then they're brought back to life, with the express purpose of stopping the Reapers, for real this time.
Shepard avenges their own death, finishes their unfinished mission, and then, like all ghosts who resolve their unfinished business, has to go. Maybe they die for real, maybe they only lose their body, but they're not allowed to stay. The purpose of the haunting is over.
like idk how purposeful any of this was, but it is immensely satisfying to me to know that from the moment Shepard wakes up in ME2 they're on borrowed time. Shepard is given enough time to set their untimely death to rights and not a minute more.
People hate on the ending of Mass Effect 3 for a variety of reasons. For me, it's the way they, like.
They know. The developers know that the Destroy ending is the obvious correct answer. The kneejerk reflex after all this fighting is to want them destroyed.
That's why they arbitrarily hold a gun to EDI and the Geth's heads over and go, "You better not. You BETTER FUCKING NOT. I'll shoot. I SWEAR I'LL DO IT."
Which completely ruins any philosophical nuance that deciding the Reapers' fate might have. "Should we seek symbiosis with them, take control of them, or kill them and also murder a bunch of other unrelated people in cold blood too why not?"
They knew the choices they were offering weren't very compelling. So they put a hand on the scale.
Because the thing is? Destroy is the kneejerk, of course. But after much consideration? Objectively, Destroy is the right answer for the Reapers. Or would be if they didn't have that gun. The very existence of the Control ending proves that.
The problem with Control as an option is that it eliminates the Reapers' capacity for agency. The ME3 ending states in no uncertain terms that the Reapers are slaves to program. They obey the Catalyst unthinkingly. They destroy societies in an endless cycle because that is what the Catalyst believes is best, based on his own ideas.
He, the Catalyst, is a self-aware AI.
But the Reapers are not. They just obey the Catalyst. For all their bluster in ME1 and 2, for all Sovereign and Harbinger like to talk big, they're all just word-processing. The Catalyst is the only thinking machine among them.
And the proof of that is that if Shepard replaces the Catalyst and sends them contradictory orders, the Reapers all universally obey the new protocol without question. They're in the midst of destroying worlds when the program "Do not destroy these races," comes through. And so they all drop what they're doing and leave without an ounce of hesitation or consideration.
Because they're just obedient machines.
And if that is true? If they're not intelligent, free-thinking artificial life like the Geth or EDI?
Then what value is their existence? They're just complicated warships built for genocide. That is the totality of their being.
And if that is true? Then why would we "seek coexistence" with brainless killing machines? Why would we want to control them, to arm a god-emperor with an armada of planet-killing super-weapons to keep the galaxy in line?
If Reapers obey the Catalyst unquestioningly, if they will obey Shepard unquestioningly, if they are just unthinking and unquestioning machines....
Then obviously we should just destroy them. That is the conclusion that the Catalyst and his choices inevitably brings us back to. If they're just the Catalyst's weapons of slaughter and nothing more, then those weapons of slaughter should not exist. They should all be destroyed and their destruction celebrated in the same way we would celebrate all the world nations disarming their nuclear arsenals.
But the game says no. If you destroy the Reapers, you destroy EDI and the Geth. Because it thinks they're the same, even as it introduces this plot point that completely upends any claim the Reapers have to being intelligent.
In the end, the final choice of ME3 is flawed at a point of basic principles. I reject the notion that it's founded on, that what you choose to do with the Reapers is a reflection of your beliefs towards EDI and the Geth, and their right to coexist with organic lifeforms.
the thing here is of course that it worked. it worked, so she has to do it again. she has to send him again. she's not even going to save dubois and shapiro, she's not going to save yao and ilyukhina, she's not changing anything, it worked.
except maybe she adds some supplies, to the ship. increases the amount of food, includes some organic compounds. more painkillers. and maybe she spends more time in proximity to grace. not working with him, not talking to him, just doing what she'd be doing anyway, what she's already done, with him in her line of sight
and he notices, because that's his job. was his job. that was the point of him, to know her well enough to notice something has changed. and he doesn't say anything, isn't going to say anything, and in fact maybe nothing gets said. neither of them say anything and the lab explodes and she sends him to die and she waits and waits and waits and the beetles come back and he doesn't. and then she wakes up again on an aircraft carrier off the coast of china
and it WORKED. and she's here AGAIN, because maybe this is just what happens to you when you are the final signature on a mass extinction event. maybe this is her penance. maybe the world continues on without her, warmer and brighter, but she has to stay here in the worst of it and hold it all together.
she did better. she tried. she knew more. once she'd killed him, once he was out her reach, she could change more. maybe less people died. maybe different people died.
she looks at him as long as she's able and she packs him more vitamins and she doesn't say anything and the lab explodes and she waits and the crops fail and she waits and the wars start and she waits and the beetles come back and she wakes up again on an aircraft carrier and she rolls over to press her face into the mattress and she screams
the fifth time, she promotes him. six months from launch, that's when she wakes up, and she gets out of bed and gets presentable and walks to his door and says You're the primary science officer now. and he says What? No. No, it can't be me. and she says It has to be you. and she's not trying to do anything with her face, with her voice, but something must happen anyway because he looks at her and says You're sure? You're really sure? and she says It should have been you from the start. and he says Okay, let me– Gosh, okay, I have been awake five minutes and all I've eaten since yesterday is candy, but sure, yeah, I'll go on the suicide mission. Are you– We're getting breakfast, c'mon.
she packs him vitamins. she looks at him. he gets mildly obsessed with a different c-drama every time, somehow. maybe that's the linchpin, maybe he just has to make it through them all. she fills a harddrive with them. she tells him she's never been more sure of anything than she is of him. she waits and she waits and she waits. the beetles come back. he doesn't. she wakes up on an aircraft carrier.
she stops the lab explosion. she keeps him out of prison by the skin of her teeth. the beetles don't come back.
she lets the lab explode. she lets him hate her for killing him. she's going to be older than his alien, soon. she's on the aircraft carrier, watching him breathe, for six months. and then she's waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for twenty seven years. twenty seven years is too long for any neat little montages of her catching things before they fall. the weather isn't even the same. it depends who wins the war for the sahara. she's sisyphus, she's prometheus, she's atlas. she kills her only warmth and it gets colder and colder and colder until she wakes up again and there he is. maybe it's a gift. six whole months of him breathing
she wakes up on the aircraft carrier and she lets herself lay there because he comes looking for her after half an hour and she sees his face and she says Oh, it's good to see you. and he narrows his eyes and leans forward to press the back of his hand to her forehead, and he's never done that before. he grabs her arm, he taps her shoulder, their fingers brush when he hands her something. that's it. that's all. it's like an electric shock, his hand on her forehead. his worry. she's going to kill him and he's worried she's running a fever. she doesn't deserve six months
he says, What? she says I'm fine. he says You can't wave a get-out-of-jail-free card at a contagion. You should go back to bed. she says No, I should get to my meeting. he says Oh I already told them you're not coming. C'mon, sleep another two hours. I'll find you some soup.
and she says I keep killing you and you never make it any easier. Why do I keep getting you back? and he says Why am I here at all? and he doesn't remember, he's just far too willing to follow her anywhere, and she doesn't want to lose him. she has to. she says It has to be you. and he says If you're sure.
the diana allers interviews in shep’s cabin in me3 are so unserious in some ways. imagine you’re exhausted and hopeless and experiencing these insane horrors and then you turn on the news to see a riveting and hopeful interview with THE commander shepard and the person that’s supposed to save everyone shows up in a hoodie they’ve been blatantly wearing for a week straight, darkest circles known to man under their eyes, fish tank full in the background, model ship half-completed on the desk. shitty club synth music bumpin. look at my galactic hero dawg im gonna die
They've filled the Normandy with people who look up to you in an effect to placate you and make you feel at home, but it's more alienating than if everyone hated you. They've given you your own private quarters but they make you feel alone and cut off from everyone. They say it's your ship, just like the one flew on before, and that you're in command, only there are doors that won't open for you and are locked tight. They parade before you a friend you knew who is so excited about all of this, but you didn't live through that and you're not over what you lost like he is. You look in the mirror and you're literally cracking at the seams and they tell you and only you can save the galaxy - enough that you were worth billions of resources to bring back - and you think about the soldier, the friend, you lost on Virmire and how nobody thought to bring them back. You're a ghost everyone is worshipping, a legend that everyone is clinging to, a soldier, a spectre, a saviour, a hero, but not a person anymore.
Obsessed with playing Mass Effect over and over again like this story will literally never end in anything but tragedy. Shepard might be an asshole or a saint, a caring friend or a hardened soldier, a complex enigma or an open book, and any combination or in between thereof.
And it doesn't matter because Jenkins always dies. And Ash dies, or Kaidan dies. And Shepard dies. And Shepard lives. And your crew dies. And the little boy is shot down. And Palaven burns. And Illium falls. And earth is ripped apart. And Shepard dies.
You can't save them. Nearly a dozen playthroughs of hard work, an endless uphill climb, and even if you get it picture perfect, take every quest, save every hostage and gun down every bad guy, your reward is the ugly choice, the mirror of war: how many lives will you sacrifice to take one more breath? Will you kill the geth you just painstakingly saved for a single inhale on the charred remains of an exploded station? Or will you let the narrative go the way it's meant to and just let Shepard die?
So Shepard lives, or Shepard dies, and the story always ends the same goddamn way. And you queue up Mass Effect 1 again because you have to.
What I really, really wish Bioware had focused on when it came to defeating the reapers is the singular advantage our cycle had. Every previous cycle lost all chance at survival the moment the reapers came out of dark space, because the reapers took the Citadel, and therefore the relays. With the reapers in control of the relays system, they cut off travel, communication, and obliterate supply lines.
Everyone in every previous cycle was cut off and isolated before they even knew what hit them. If they didn’t even know the reapers existed, it might be years, even decades before they knew what happened at all! There would be no way to share intel, to warn others about reaper movements, etc. A society that developed to rely on the relays would be utterly crippled without them, and every previous cycle lost the relays in the opening minutes of an attack they didn’t even know was coming.
Except us. Our cycle kept the Citadel. When the reapers showed up we still had control of it AND the relays. We were the first cycle in the history of the reapers to keep that advantage - because of the prothean scientists on Ilos. It's really an incredible thing when you think about it.
The previous cycles couldn't evacuate, fall back and mount a defense with their allies. They couldn’t reach safety. Without the relays there was nowhere to go! All the reapers had to do was go system by system to wipe everyone out systematically, and all that any previous cycle could do was wait until they were next and fight the best they could with what they had available.
The crucible is such an insane concept because there would have been no way to pull it off. You don't have the resources, the labor, the logistics, to even begin to build it, because you don't have the relays to move the resources or the people where they need to be. And even more insane, the battery for the whole damn thing was the Citadel, which every previous cycle lost access to in the opening minutes of the initial attack!
Even if the protheans or anyone else could have found a way to build it, there would have been no way to use it. Why in the world would you base your MacGuffin on something so inaccessible?
If you had to use the Crucible as your win button, it could have been interesting if you looked at it not as something that everyone else ran out of time to build, but as something other cycles had conceived of and had no way to build - but we did. At a cost.
The reapers are here. We might still have comm buoys and the relays, but the reapers are still killing billions, destroying strategic locations and wreaking havoc with supply lines. So if you are diverting supplies to build the Crucible...who are you taking them from? Whose front collapses because you took what they needed to build that thing? Who gets fucked over because this ship had to mine minerals to build the crucible instead of run supplies to refugees? A war table like you had in DA:I could have been so interesting in Mass Effect 3.
The fact that the protheans reached through time and made one, small change that dramatically changed the way the reapers harvest a cycle had so much potential. We were different. We had a chance no one else ever had, not just because Shepard is a badass, but because a small group of people who had no hope for themselves decided to have hope for someone else. We weren’t better than other cycles – we were gifted something no one else got: the protheans broke the cycle. We didn’t. They did.
I wish the game hadn’t forgotten that, and I wish the ending would have found a way to tie back to that. Instead of boiling the end of the trilogy down to an RGB choice between control, destroy, and synthesis, I wish it had celebrated the truth that we are nothing without our differences. We are nothing without each other. We could bring a bunch of disparate organic and synthetic races together to fight for each other’s right to exist because the people who came before us performed a selfless act to help a future they would never see.
What do you think would have happened in Shane and Ilya were outed during the Sochi Olympics? I'm reading a fic about this and them running away and I'm aware it's not realistic, but I think you're the only writer in the fandom really capable of putting things into perspective, so your opinion is important to me
Anyway I'm actually starting to think you're a genius!! How do you know so much about so many topics it's crazy
I am so honored by the trust you have placed in me. I did my absolute best for you.
Shane’s going to be a lot safer than Ilya in this situation.
Like, Shane should not run if he’s outed in Sochi. He’s actually going to be in a lot more danger if he runs. Russia cannot go after a visiting Olympian—especially one of Shane’s stature—without causing an international incident. I wouldn’t exactly be extending my stay in Russia (I personally would not be leaving the sight of my country’s officials) but Shane’s going to be relatively safe if he gets outed in Sochi as long as he stays in the Olympic village. If Shane’s the only one who’s outed, I’d say he’d be fine to stay and finish competing, as long as he 1) does not leave the Olympic village and 2) does not comment on the situation while he’s in Russian borders. He’s there to play hockey and say “no comment” and that is fucking it. He is not making any goddamn statements on his sexuality while in Russian territory or this all becomes a lot more complicated, for reasons I’ll explain below.
If he leaves and tries to flee Russia himself, he may get murdered in a hate crime by a random Russian homophobe. He should not run. There is no benefit in running for him. His country can protect him if he stays with their group. They cannot protect him if he absconds into a fuck-off big country filled with people who hate him.
In the absolute worst case scenario, Russia could try to subject Shane to a period of incarceration followed by deportation. I personally see this as incredibly unlikely. But it is technically an option.
To be clear, openly gay athletes attended the 2014 Olympics as part of the official U.S. delegation. It is not illegal to be gay in Russia. It is illegal to promote LGBTQ+ rights in Russia. If Shane’s only been outed, then he hasn’t actually broken Russian law. He didn’t promote shit because he didn’t do anything. This is also why Shane can’t make statements about the situation while he’s in Russia. If anything he says could be construed as promoting LGBTQ+ rights, then he has actually broken Russian law, and Russia’s response becomes much more unpredictable. His mouth needs to be goddamn shut until he crosses that fucking border. Shane Hollander is not coming to terms with his own sexuality and making passionate declarations about the rights of gay men in Sochi fucking Russia. He is shutting the fuck up until he’s out of Russian airspace.
That all being said, Russia isn’t exactly known to be adverse to holding kangaroo court. The United States actually advises its citizens not to travel there in part because of the likelihood of wrongful prosecution. And Shane just got outed as a gay man who’s fucking Putin’s favorite hockey player. So maybe Russia’s feeling vindictive and tries to construe some random bullshit words he says as promoting gay rights in violation of their law. In 2014, the absolute maximum penalty a foreign national can face for promoting LGBTQ+ rights within Russia’s borders is 15 days incarceration followed by deportation.
It is incredibly unlikely that Russia attempts to incarcerate Shane Hollander under this statute. It is even less likely that he would serve any time in Russian prison over it. The chances of Shane Hollander going to jail in Russia under their anti-LGBTQ+ legislation are negligible.
You have to contextualize this within the circumstances. Shane Hollander is not some random athlete who got caught breaking the law in Russian territory on a personal visit. He is Shane fucking Hollander, Canadian National Treasure, and this is the goddamn Olympics.
I’ve talked about this in other posts, but let’s make something clear for the sake of this post: International law is not law in the way we traditionally think of it. It doesn’t work like the criminal code of your state or US federal law or anything like that. It is not a legitimately binding code where authorities will show up to incarcerate you if you break it.
It is playground politics on a global scale. To simplify it greatly, it’s about following playground rules so you get to sit at the cool kid’s table at lunch.
To create legitimately binding, codified law, it has to flow from some kind of central authority. In America, Congress is vested with law-making authority over America. America is not listening to some goddamn Europeans tell us what to do. I have read speeches from actual U.S. senators that can be summed up as “America is not listening to some goddamn Europeans tell us what to do.”
When you hear about international law, the Hague, international criminal courts—those are all systems that countries have decided to voluntarily participate in for the sake of diplomatic relations. They cannot be forced. Those institutions have authority because countries consent to their authority. Everyone’s just all playing nice with each other so international trade deals run smoother and no one raises tariffs on each other and so that their citizens can enter your country without applying for a visa first and vice versa. It is an extremely elaborate web of peer pressure and it plays out on an international scale.
The Olympics is a massive fucking part of that.
Countries want to be in the Olympics. That is something that I cannot put in strong enough terms. If we are talking about international diplomatic relations, the Olympics is about as big as it fucking gets. Countries will bend over backwards to protect their place in that fucking show. It is huge for promoting a sense of national pride. It is huge for stimulating the economy. And it is huge for the international pissing contest that is global diplomacy. Countries use the event to either affirm alliances or establish dominance over their enemies.
For example, have you ever watched Miracle (2004)?
For those who haven’t, Miracle is about the 1980 Olympics, and specifically the US v. Soviets men’s hockey competition. Imagine: It is the middle of the goddamn Cold War. The Soviets were the heavily favored team to win. They won Olympics hockey almost every year. They’d just cleaned America’s clock in an exhibition match that happened in advance of the game.
The 1980 Olympics happens. America somehow beats the Soviets.
It united the goddamn nation. Like. We might as well have just won the Cold War. It was a symbolic victory over the USSR, even if it was just a sports match. America rode that high of national pride for a long time.
When it’s the Olympics, the entire world is watching. Them being outed would be so far beyond being about just Shane and Ilya. Every single world leader participating in those Games would have an emergency briefing on their outing within the hour. Even if those are not their athletes, they may have to issue a formal statement or response regarding how Russia handles this. They may have the prime minister of Canada calling them in an hour saying I need you to agree to levy fuck-off tariffs against Russia if they do not give me back my special hockey boy right the FUCK now.
Because that’s the rub. This is not just any athlete. This is Shane fucking Hollander.
Hockey is in an integral part of the Canadian national identity. This is a country that cares profoundly about their hockey boys. It is a load-bearing part of the national zeitgeist. And if we say that Shane Hollander is the Sidney Crosby analogue, then almost every single person in that country knows his name.
I didn’t really grasp just how big of a deal Shane Hollander was likely to be the first time I watched the show. So much of the show focuses on their private interactions, where they’re just Shane and Ilya together. We don’t see them as celebrities nearly as much. We know they’re famous, we know that they’re in press conferences, we know that they get recognized by fans sometimes and that Shane at least got pap’d with Rose Landry. But when I first watched it, I figured that Shane and Ilya were just like. Athlete famous. Or like “drummer in a band” famous. Like you know them if you really follow the sport but other than that they’re pretty low profile. And I was coming from the perspective of someone who grew up in the American south, where hockey’s just not a big deal.
It is a big deal in Canada.
If Shane Hollander is their world’s Sidney Crosby, then he is a national fucking hero. He has been in national news since he was 12 years old. That country has watched him grow up. It has cheered for him. It has hung their hope and their national pride to the idea of Shane Hollander, and it has been doing it for a fucking decade.
The prime minister of Canada is going to crawl up Putin’s ass to get Shane Hollander back home without so much as a single hair out of place.
It is internationally embarrassing if he can’t. It’d be sending a message to the Canadian public and the world at large that Russia is stronger than Canada and can do whatever the fuck it wants to Canadian citizens without fear of retribution. That is simply not an option.
If Russia even suggests that it’s considering pulling shit against Shane Hollander, the prime minister is making phone calls. He is calling in favors. He is threatening tariffs and international sanctions. He is getting on a plane if he has to. Shane Hollander is the people’s princess and he is coming fucking home. The prime minister will personally be at the airport to receive him, with a fleet of the goddamn press. Look at the might of Canada, bringing babygirl home to its tender, maple-scented embrace.
Gay marriage has been legal in Canada for nearly a decade at this point. Canada is pushing itself in the international landscape as an LGBTQ+ safe space. The fact that he was outed as gay wouldn’t necessarily be a deterrent to Canada applying political pressure. And you cannot be the host of the fucking Olympics and imprison a country’s most beloved athlete for being a member of a minority group without opening a massive can of fuck around and find out.
Honestly I’d be fascinated by the global response. I can’t think of a single time in history where a country’s tried to fuck around and find out like that. Like. They may legitimately get banned from the Olympics if they try that shit.
Under the Olympic Charter, you can get banned from competing in future games as a sanction for human rights violations. This has historically only been used as a sanction for actions against a country’s own citizens as far as I’m aware, and it’s very rarely invoked. Like. South Africa was banned due to apartheid for a while but also we let did fully let the Nazis host the Olympics right before WWII. So. Hit or miss.
I just can’t personally think of a single time in history a country tried to imprison another country’s Olympian over something as contentious as wanting to violate specifically his human rights. Like. Olympians have been arrested during the Games before but that’s because they like. Tried to buy cocaine. And even then the police let them go to be disciplined by the Olympic committee for their country. Countries just do not like touching other country’s athletes during the Olympics. That’s so diplomatically explosive that I can’t begin to imagine the global backlash that would come from going after Shane Hollander for being gay and sucking off Putin’s favorite hockey player. But I do see the Olympics committee reacting strongly, because something like this would be a direct attack on the principles of comity underpinning the games. Countries are going to be way less willing to keep participating in the Games if they know their athletes can be unjustly imprisoned in the host country without consequence to the host country. There would likely be multiple countries reacting very strongly to any kind of formal sanction against Shane Hollander, not because they give a shit about him, but because they want to set the precedent that you do not fucking touch another country’s Olympians. Ultimately, I do think the Olympic committee would straight up ban Russia just because the Games may fall apart if they don’t.
Notably, Russia did actually receive a ban from the Olympics after the 2014 Games. This had nothing to do with human rights violations. They got caught doping their own athletes during the 2014 Games, which also violates the Olympic Charter. I’m assuming that this did not happen in the game changers universe because, critically, they doped their ice hockey team. Ilya would have been caught up in it, and there’s no evidence of that happening in canon.
So, presumably, Russia is in a position where the only thing that could endanger its future participation in the Games is if they do something as batshit fucking crazy as trying to arrest and incarcerate Canada’s Favorite Hockey Boy. That is simply not fucking happening. They’d be too worried about a potential Olympic ban and the firestorm of global backlash that would rain down on them for jailing a goddamn visiting Olympian. Like, it doesn’t matter whose dick he sucked, sometimes it’s just not worth it.
So, if Shane gets outed in Sochi, he is fine. Like. He’s not fine, he’s just been outed, but he’s not in any real danger from the Russian government.
Ilya’s situation is different.
Ilya needs to get his ass over the goddamn border.
Ilya does not need to worry so much about legal repercussions. He does not need to worry about incarceration. He can’t actually be incarcerated for this. The anti-LGBTQ+ promotion law that’s in place in 2014 does not actually permit incarceration for Russian citizens, just foreign nationals. If we’re just looking at official state sanctions, the most he’s getting is a fine. So if he’s arrested, it’s because he was framed for something. Which like. Not impossible for Russia to do. And it would be very difficult to get him out of incarceration if he was arrested on false charges.
But if we’re just looking at the consequences of him being outed, Ilya is not going to the gulag for this.
He is going to “kill himself.”
He is going to be found dead, having fallen from somewhere tragically high, or overdosed on drugs no one knew he was addicted to, or having shot himself twice in the head with his non-dominant hand. This was, of course, due to his own overwhelming shame from the embarrassment he’s subjected himself and his nation to, and was absolutely not a state-sanctioned hit, no, really. Really. They promise. They are crying too!!!
Again, contextualize the situation. It is 2014. It actually used to be better for gay people in Russia before 2013. The Russian government started to pass increasingly strict laws against queer people that started in 2013 (and have gotten fuck off bad in the last few years, but those won’t be a problem for the 2014 Olympics). So the Russia government has just kickstarted a national campaign against LGBTQ+ rights, and they find out that their hockey godling who is in all of their nationalist propaganda has been trading blow jobs with Canada’s own Prince of Hockey.
By this point, there has very likely been a very recent press conference that involved Ilya Rozanov shaking Putin’s hand. Putin has endorsed Ilya as one of the greatest this country has to offer. Ilya Rozanov was named the captain of their Olympic team over all of those KHL players who are all major and active participants of Russian state propaganda. And then right after he was picked, Putin turned around and warned the entire goddamn world “do not have your athletes in my country promoting the queer agenda.” There is a fuck ton of preexisting global attention on queer rights in Russia because of the Olympics.
So. In sum: They are at the launch of a national campaign against the very thing Ilya turned out to be. They just endorsed Ilya Rozanov as their national ideal that everyone should aspire in almost the same breath that they told the entire fucking world that Russia did not want that fag shit happening within its borders. And then he lost to goddamn Latvia.
And then he was outed for having gay sex with an equally famous hockey player from a competing country.
This is internationally humiliating for them. They do not want to just let this go with a fucking monetary fine.
And they are smart enough to know that if Ilya Rozanov gets over the border, he is not coming back.
He is getting on a plane to America and filing asylum paperwork the second he crosses the border. He’s moving to Canada and getting hitched to a pretty freckled Canadian in a ceremony officiated by the fucking prime minister. He is never going to be seen on Russian soil again.
There is a time limit to solving the problem of Ilya Rozanov. It is counting down. Russia will have to decide very quickly if there are too many eyes on them right now to retaliate against him or if they need to send a message to their citizens that you do not get to globally humiliate them the way Ilya Rozanov just did.
The options you have to resolve this are going to depend on how exactly Ilya and Shane are outed.
Like. What happened? Did someone put the pieces together and sell the story to the press? Was his incredibly literal sexting thread with Shane Hollander leaked? Did someone get a photo of them kissing on the Vegas balcony when they were rookies and they’ve been sitting on it since 2011? Some other third thing? Were Shane and Ilya outed simultaneously or was it staggered? All of that is going to affect their options to get Ilya out of this fucking country.
Like. If it’s a situation like in snapping birch, where Shane is outed first and it’s unclear for the first few hours whether Ilya’s going down with the ship, maybe you risk having him make a break for the goddamn border. Maybe he just tries to clear Russian airspace before they figure out that he’s Shane Hollander’s bisexual love machine. I’m not saying that’s the safest option, but it’s one I can see them at least considering.
If they are outed simultaneously, Shane and Ilya are now 1) handcuffed to each other, 2) performing gay hockey Romeo & Juliet on the international stage and 3) having some very awkward meetings with world leaders.
Again, Shane Hollander is much safer than Ilya Rozanov is right now. His country still likes him, mostly. He is still Canada’s special hockey boy who they love so so much, and Ilya is on the hit list for the fucking kremlin.
Ilya is not going home. He is not facing his family. They will fucking shoot him and then say he shot himself. #theyarecryingtoo!!!
If he is smart about it, Ilya is now attached at the hip to Shane Hollander, who has the type of bulletproofness that comes with being in a parasocial relationship with your entire goddamn country. That gives him his best odds.
If I’m Shane? Ilya is staying within five feet of me at all moments. We are going to the bathroom together. He is sleeping in my bed with me directly on top of him because it’ll be harder to kill him in his sleep if you have to physically move me to do it. Shane and Ilya would need to jump straight from “uncertain situationship stage where one of you took the other’s virginity and didn’t call after and the other kept texting for several months despite getting no response and now you both feel existential angst over it” to “disgustingly codependent couple that is never ever physically apart.”
They are not staying in the Olympic Village. They are not competing in the rest of the Games. They are sleeping in the Canadian embassy and getting on the first flight they physically can get out of that fucking country. And I am not talking commercial. I mean a world government needs to send a plane to go get them.
Like, if Shane wants to give Ilya his best odds, he is refusing to leave the country unless it’s holding Ilya Rozanov’s hand. He is throwing every single ounce of national goodwill at his disposal at the Canadian government to try and force them to get his situationship out with him.
Legitimately, they need Ilya out of that country so fast that it leaves a fucking smoke trail. They need to get him out before he “dies in a tragic accident” or “kills himself.” They need to get him out before he gets framed for a crime they can actually incarcerate him for.
In this situation, the win conditions are if they can get Ilya out of the country safely when he’s trapped like a rat in the Olympic village in a country where everyone knows his face because the state purposefully promoted him to them as the national ideal. He cannot just go to fucking ground and try to stealth his way across the border. You need the eyes of other governments watching him closely so it’s harder for him to “kill himself.” You need a safe, secure method out of the country—i.e. a diplomatic flight—so he can’t “fall down the stairs” at the airport. Which means you need to 1) convince world leaders to let Ilya Rozanov on one of their planes and 2) ideally get them to pressure Russia to not stop him on the way to the airport.
I want to be clear—Russia can’t just close its borders to Ilya Rozanov specifically. At least not easily. He has a passport. It’s not a simple as just taking away the passport.
A recognized principe of international human rights law is freedom of movement. Countries cannot just revoke their citizen’s passports willy nilly—especially if they’re revoking his passport because he’s gay and they want to stop him from leaving the country. They have to have some kind of cognizable ground to put a travel ban on him—like if he had a warrant out for his arrest, owed debts to the government, was a national security threat, etc—or it violates the playground rules that the world governments agreed to abide by. Russia will no longer get to sit at the cool kids’ table if it just goes up to Ilya and says “hey man you can’t leave the country anymore”
It is 2014. Russia is still, for the most part, trying to maintain diplomatic relations. It just convinced the world to let it host the Olympics. And because of that, the entire fucking world has its focus on what they do in response to this. They cannot just fly off the fucking handle and refuse to let Ilya Rozanov leave the country. That would violate their own laws and international principles of law, and the entire world would see them do it. They would be looking for a legal way to keep him in the country, which means Shane and Ilya need a way to get him safely out of the country before Russia has the time to come up with an excuse to keep him there or just, you know, fucking shoot him.
And that. Is not a lot of time. Like every second that he stays in Russia post-outing decreases his odds of leaving the country alive.
If you really want to play out the logical consequences of this kind of fic, you are now writing RPF about former President Barack Obama.
Shane is Canadian, but Ilya is playing for an American team. And, critically, a lot of the spotlight around queer rights and the 2014 Olympics was focused on America.
If we’re talking about 2014, we are pre-Obergefell. Gay marriage is not legal across the United States. But Obama made it a key issue during his time in office. He’s declared that he wouldn’t defend the Defense of Marriage Act. He’s gotten rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He’s publicly endorsed queer rights and he’s directed American agencies to promote queer rights worldwide through diplomatic measures.
Obama was under pressure to boycott the 2014 Olympics because of Russia’s recent anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. He chose not to, but he did send openly queer athletes as part of the official U.S. delegation as an implicit condemnation of Russia’s actions. The spotlight was on America because of this.
So America was participating in the Olympics even after human rights’ activists petitioned for a boycott because of Russia’s anti-queer legislation. It was subtweeting Russia’s stance on gay rights on a global scale. And then a major athlete for an American team who lives in America on an American visa gets outed for making passionate gay love to the Hockey Prince of America’s closest ally.
America’s going to be expected to say something about that shit.
Now, they may say “we don’t actually have any citizens involved in this, we support queer rights but we will not be directly intervening out of respect for international comity.” Or they may say “AMERICA STANDS BY ITS GAY HOCKEY PLAYERS EVEN IF THEY ARENT BORN HERE. LAND OF THE IMMIGRANT RED WHITE AND BLUE MOTHERFUCKERS” *eagle screech* *gunfire*
It. Responses could really vary here. And I think how involved America is willing to be will depend on how much political capital Shane and Ilya can offer them.
Again, at this point in history, the president’s office is on a tear in favor of queer rights for once. It is a major platform actually. It’s a topic that Obama historically has pushed boundaries for.
Who are they trying to bring home? Is it gay hockey Romeo & Juliet?
Or is it just some Slavic fuckboy?
This situation is going to be a lot worse for Shane and Ilya if they are outed because their texts leak. Because their texts do not look good for them. Their texts look like Ilya spent two years saying “please please PLEASE let me fuck you” *unsolicited dick pic* “you want these nine inches so bad cmon baby” *thirsty tongue emoji* *eggplant emoji* *prayer hands emoji* and then ghosted the day after Shane Hollander finally texted that he could come fuck him. Like. Their texts are low key embarrassing for both of them. Ilya comes off looking like some dickhead who just wanted to get his dick wet and Shane looks like a jilted girl who couldn’t figure out she was just a notch in the bedpost after several months of being left on read.
That is not the kind of thing diplomats burn bridges over. Like. American democrats are fighting for their life trying to get people to accept the idea that gay people can get married. They are not about to throw down the gauntlet with a world power in defense of what looks like a chapter torn out of the fuckboy playbook.
But maybe they apply some political pressure if Shane and Ilya at least look like they at least have the potential to be gay Romeo & Juliet.
Yes, the rivalry makes them a divisive couple. But it makes them a divisive couple for specifically some American hockey fans. This is bigger than the NHL. This is bigger than their individual cities. This is a tale you’re selling to the world, most of whom found out that Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov existed 0.5 seconds ago when they got outed and suddenly became headline news in every paper on the planet.
They are both very attractive men. They are talented. And they have a tale of star-crossed love that has the potential to be very sympathetic if it’s told right. And maybe that’s enough to make them valuable as a very compelling story about the need for equal rights, including marriage equality, which the White House is actively campaigning for.
To be clear—America and Canada are not threatening war over this, but they also don’t need to. All they need to do is 1) let Ilya get on their plane with Shane instead of telling him to get his own ride and 2) pressure the Russian government behind the scenes to let him get on the plane. Maybe the White House + the Canadian government would be willing to apply pressure on Russia and package it with promises of a prisoner exchange or trade deal or something if Russia just doesn’t stop Ilya from leaving? I dunno. This part is the most uncertain. I’m not privy to backdoor inter-continental governmental negotiations. Shane and Ilya would have to be really, really worth it for that kind of effort, but they’re high profile enough to have the potential. Otherwise, you just have to have Ilya make a break for the border and pray he gets across before someone shoots him.
If world powers do successfully intervene on their behalf, Shane and Ilya do not just get to shake hands when the plane lands and go their separate ways.
The fuckboy dynasty is over. Their best odds in this situation if they convince the fucking president that they are in a serious relationship—or at least convince him that they can convince the world that they’re in a serious relationship. You can’t just have the fucking president making serious political moves for you and then disembark the fucking ride. Like. You can, the president isn’t going to make you keep fucking each other at like, gunpoint, but it would not be good for their careers or getting any kind of continued aid from the government when it comes to keeping Ilya safe from his very very angry home country.
If they want to minimize the real-world consequences from their outing, they are in a committed relationship now whether they like it or not. They are at the White House on Thanksgiving standing next to the fucking turkey in matching Burberry coats and clapping politely. They are each other’s dates to Christmas dinner with the Canadian prime minister. The upside is that it actually may insulate them somewhat from official NHL retaliation against their relationship, but only because fucking Obama is coming to their games now.
They’d be placed on a collision course with marriage once it becomes legal across the U.S. after it’s codified into federal law by the Hollanov law that democrats named after them. They could probably drag out the dating phase for several presidential terms and then claim they grew apart if they didn’t want to get married? I’d be very careful about how they announce any breakups. But like. In the initial aftermath, they are not telling the world that the gears of goddamn nations just moved so they could be fuck buddies. They need as much public goodwill as they can get or someone will get mad enough to shoot them. No, they are in the kind of gay love that changes history, whether it’s true or not.
It’s political theater. They’d be performing a love story for the eyes of the world. And whatever they do would likely have consequences for if gay people get rights and how fast that happens. It would be a huge deal.
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