25 y/o She/They Stuff about being in a fandom and stuff from the fandom itself. Includes stuff like Supernatural, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Critical Role and Marvel.
The way the line "Shane Hollander can have whatever he wants here" delivered after refusing to serve him a ginger ale without a side of attitude absolutely infuriates me.
“You still want?” “I still wunnt.” leads me to believe that once shane drops masking a little more, he starts feeling comfy letting himself echo ilya from time to time. it starts out with words and phrases that conveniently double as an answer to whatever they’re talking about. like above, ilya asks him something and shane answers using the same words and same inflection, just with his monotone little drone. “You have remote?" "I hayve re-mote."
he fucking loves the was ilya says “probably.” ten out of ten times if ilya’s saying probably, shane’s bringing up the rear with a deadpan but delighted “prah-bubly.”
ilya doesn’t say anything at first bc shane’s kind of always done this? it’s just much more frequent now. but then shane starts quietly echoing stuff even when he’s not being asked something. like he’s literally just repeating random words that ilya says, even in the middle of his sentence. and finally ilya is like hey what the fuck. why are you being an asshole? like he knows his english pronunciation is still not great with some things after all these years, but it’s kind of a dick move to point it out so much!
and shane is first and foremost confused by this! it was never about roasting him or being mean and he has to sit him down and explain to him that no no. since the day they met there has never been anything more satisfying to his ears than ilya speaking. his brain likes the way the words sound coming out of ilya’s mouth and shane needs to feel them in his mouth too. it’s an echo of delight, not derision.
once ilya understands that he’s not being hate-crimed by his own boyfriend twenty times a week, he’s all good with it. maybe even a little endeared, because that must mean shane feels comfortable around him, right? eventually, it doesn’t even register as strange to have a one-note parrot within his vicinity, occasionally repeating bits and pieces of his sentences when it suits him. that’s when shane really starts to let the echo flag fly.
he doesn’t even need to be talking to shane specifically anymore. if it’s coming out of ilya’s mouth, shane’s brain is latching onto that shit and trying it on for size. like when they’re on the road for a game and tensions are midwest-hellhole-green-sky high. ilya’s trying to calm down a particularly antsy group of coastal rookies like “Yes we all have alerts on our phones. Is tornado probably - just keep an eye out.” and the rookies are like, shitting their pants and stuff and meanwhile Shane’s in the background muttering “Ees tornaydo prah-bubly” under his breath, attention otherwise focused on zipping up his travel bag.
they’re out with some of the guys and marlow is purposely being a pain in the ass about leaving just to stress ilya out/get him back for years of ilya foolishness and ilya is standing at the curb about to crash out like “Marly I will leave your drunk ass here if you don’t get in stupid uber right now!” meanwhile, mumbled from the safety of the sidewalk: “Stoopid oo-burr…”
sometimes he'll be on the phone in the living room and can't even make out shane's exact repeat from where he's meal prepping. so it's kind of like soothing background noise, ilya speaking freely while there's this lowkey undercurrent of shane murmuring in the kitchen, happy as a clam to get his brain scratched when they're not even in the same room.
idk i just think ilya's got a very brain-petty voice and pronunciation of things, and i like to live in a world where shane lets himself enjoy that.
apparently i like frightening and upsetting myself for no reason at all but like, even admitting such a thing was possible, what do you think would happen without the enormity of the desire that disgusts them, or without them acting on it? it takes them 9 years to figure out they love each other and that’s only thanks to the actual intimacy that exists between them. you take that out of the equation and you’re left with mutual pining two guys with a crush some vague feelings of whatever whatnot and that’s how you get shane hollander, fifty-seven years old married to a woman because that’s what any sorta kinda alleged straight man would do. both he and ilya have retired, then have become coaches, then have retired from that too. they are now rival podcasters who spend 30% of their time actually commenting on games and 70% telling people how the other doesn’t know shit about hockey and has never been good at it. and how the other has also aged horribly. they keep meeting for hockey events throughout the years and at sixty-five years old they finally sit down for a coffee and ilya goes, “maybe we can finally be mature enough to admit there is something between us. an attraction or something?” and shane goes, “just because i’ve always felt some kind of warmth in my chest whenever i looked at you doesn’t mean i find you attractive or anything. i love my wife. i mean we’re divorcing now but that’s just me exhibiting typical straight man behavior.” it’s another 200 pages before shane admits he’s gay.
I need you to know that Shane folds old grocery bags incredibly neatly and stores them in a kitchen cupboard. It takes Ilya months to learn to do the fold correctly and he's so proud of himself when he masters it that Shane doesn't have the heart to tell him it still isn't right and he will have to secretly refold them because otherwise he won't be able to sleep.
okay but i'm laughing about the sister thought of "ilya finds shane folding his clothes neatly before sex both endearing and a turn-on" being "years into their arrangement but before the cottage, ilya finds himself getting the ick when a one night stand just throws their clothes to the side carelessly and is then horrified at himself because what the FUCK was that"
“shane and ilya’s wedding song was diamonds by rihanna” uh im pretty sure it was the moana soundtrack? as evidenced by these book screenshots my sister sent me:
no no no you guys don’t understand, Pippin is someone really important in the Shire! The books don’t talk about it a lot, and the movies won’t touch that stuff with a bargepole, but Pippin will be inheriting land rights to about a quarter of the Shire. He’s second in line to becoming military leader of all Hobbits. His dad is currently in charge of that stuff, but he’s completely aware of it, and educated for it, and that’s why he’s such an over privileged little shit in the books.
I thought it was a shame the movies didn’t talk about class differences in the Shire. Also puts M&P stealing food in an uglier light.
To be fair, at the time of the Party, Pippin would have been 12, which puts it back into a more acceptable light. And they’re stealing food from Bilbo, a wealthy and eccentric family member, which again makes things a bit different.
But yes, when they call Pippin Ernil i Perrianath - Prince of the Halflings - they are actually completely spot on.
And when Pippin tells Bergil “my father farms the land around Tuckborough” he’s deliberately downplaying his class so that he can greet the boy as an equal rather than a superior. It’s Pippin’s most adult moment in the series. Bergil is engaging in a status contest which Pippin can totally win - but instead chooses not to compete. Pippin is a gilded and spoiled lordling in the Shire, but he becomes a Man of Gondor.
Yeah, to add a bit of unnecessary trivia/level of preciseness, Frodo is the oldest of the four; he was born in 2968, was (obviously) 33 at the time of the Party, and so he’s 51 here. Sam’s second-oldest; born in 2980, he was 21 when Bilbo left and is 39 at this point. Merry’s two years younger than Sam, making him 18 or 19 in 3001, when the Party took place, and Pippin was born in 2990, so he was actually 10 or 11 during the Party, and during this scene they’re ~37 and ~29, respectively.
So yeah, Pippin’s the youngest by a lot. Plus, taking hobbit aging into account, he really is still in the equivalent of his teens; remember the Party was half to celebrate Frodo’s coming-of-age at 33, and Pippin’s around twenty years younger than Frodo.
This fucked me up. I didn’t read the books and in the movie it was shown like Frodo took off with the ring like 2 days after Bilbo’s gone away, but it was 17 years after that. OMFG.
Also worth noting that “Merry and Pippin stealing food” isn’t in the book - raiding Farmer Maggot’s fields, specifically the mushrooms, is something Frodo used to do when he was a kid, before his parents died and he moved to Hobbiton to live with Bilbo. Frodo’s still afraid of Maggot’s guard dogs, but the farmer himself is sympathetic and helpful when he finds Frodo & Co. cutting through his field.
And this is specifically invoked in the books at the Council of Elrond, where Elrond argues against Pippin in particular going, because he is so young. He’s okay with Merry going but wants to keep Pippin in Rivendell. Elrond has serious misgivings against sending an early-teenager off to face the Shadow, and given what happens to Pippin in The Two Towers, he was not wrong.
Merry is also a prince of sorts - his father is Master of Buckland, which is the semi-autonomous boundary community between the Brandywine river and the Old Forest (never, alas, discussed in the movies). Merry and Pippin are friends in the books in part because they’re of relatively equal status and in part because they’re cousins (like all nobs, Shire nobs mostly marry each other).
However, the books also clearly make Merry the Responsible One, even though he’s only been a full adult for four years. (Think early 20s in human terms.) Merry buys and prepares the house at Crickhollow. Merry figures out the secret of the ring before Bilbo even gives it to Frodo, but Merry keeps Bilbo’s secret. Merry convinces Sam to spy on Frodo. Merry explains that they’re all joining Frodo on the Quest, whether Frodo wants them to or not. Merry cautions about the Old Forest and doesn’t go down to drink in the taproom at the Prancing Pony.
So in the books, Merry isn’t Pippin’s partner in pranks - instead, Merry and Pippin spend all their time together on the Quest because Merry’s looking after his younger cousin. Can you imagine what his mother would say if he came home without Pippin? Merry can, and that’s why he takes some pretty absurd personal risks during the books to make sure that doesn’t happen. Like, he literally rides into battle on the back of someone else’s horse, in disguise, because Pippin is probably somewhere in that battle.
Merry is 99%* common sense unless Pippin is involved, and then he is 100% save/rescue/protect/support Pippin. The character growth and maturation we see in Merry in the movies isn’t in the books; instead he has almost the exact opposite arc of becoming an extreme risk-taker, driven by his protective instincts.
(*The other 1% stabbed a ringwraith in the calf that one time, but we can argue that this was due to a natural expansion of Merry’s protective instincts toward Eowyn, with whom he’d bonded quite a lot recently, and toward Theoden, who he deeply respected as being kind of like his dad.)
when pippin finds merry stumbling half-blind and sick through the streets of Minas Tirith after killing the Ringwraith, he tells Merry “Poor old fellow! I’ll look after you,” half-carries him to the healing halls, and is worried sick about him until he can finally get Aragorn in to give him medicine.
It’s the first time in the story that Pippin has looked after Merry, instead of the other way around.
It shows that Pippin has grown up, that he can protect the people who always protected him.
This is also why it’s awesome when they finally come back to the Shire, and Saruman’s made a right mess of things, and it’s Merry and Pippin that kick ass and take names. They’re the closest things the Shire has to princes and military leaders, and they’ve just had adventures that make this look like a minor action. Frodo’s tired, and Sam’s just worried about Frodo, and Merry and Pippin are like hold my pint, I got this.
Something I noticed when seeing the Fellowship on the big screen again for the first time in 20-ish years was the details they put into the character costumes that tell you a lot about the hobbits without even saying a word.
While the clothing is of a general style - shirt, waistcoat for gentlefolk, breeches and coat, it’s the details on all of them that show how much thought was put into the costumes.
Compared to the average hobbit, Bilbo and Frodo both have well cut shirts made of fine fabrics and velvet or brocade waistcoats, showing their respectable and comfortably wealthy status.
Compare Frodo’s clothing with Sam and the other hobbits in the bar - similar in style, but Frodo’s is clearly well-to-do compared to the coarser fabrics Sam and the others wear, which makes sense when Sam is a gardener and doing manual labour.
Then we have Merry and Pippin in the same scene:
Like Frodo, Merry does have a nicer cut of shirt and waistcoat in a bold colour, but not quite as fancy. Meanwhile Pip, who is a kid at this point, doesn’t wear one yet.
And this shot of the boys in Rivendell really brings home the difference in the quality and expense of their clothes.
Pippin has a fine white shirt with a lace patterned collar and his braces are intricately woven, both things that would be markers of high-quality, labour intensive fibrework, not to mention the fancy white buttons.
Sam’s collar, by comparison has clear hand-stitching and the fabric of both the shirt and waistcoat are much coarser and more natural colours with buttons probably made from horn or wood.
Merry’s shirt is definitely a step or two up from Sam, but definitely not near the fanciness and quality of Pippin’s or Frodo’s. Likewise, his waistcoat is more elaborate than Sam’s with quilted patterning, but it’s also not the same quality as Frodo’s velvets and brocades.
They didn’t say much about the shire class structure in the film, but the costume designers definitely knew what they were about.
I am a normal person who understands thought crimes are not real, fiction is not reality, and people can read/write/enjoy whatever they want as long as it’s fiction and no one in real life is harmed. I don’t have to like it, because I know how to mute, block and scroll past what I don’t want to see. Overall I think labels are childish, but by definition I am proship and profic. I am also against censorship.
And if you (general you) shame or harass real people over fiction, you’re a bully and this blog is not a safe place for you.
I FINALLY FOUND OUT WHY THIS HAPPENS. You see this all the time when there’s a fight or a scrum and suddenly everyone pairs up with a member of the opposite team and they just sort of …hold each other.
Someone on reddit asked about it. And it turns out there’s a logical-ish reason:
all of the other players pair off with their man to prevent anyone else entering into the fight … so it’s a form of self policing.
[…] The players basically want to prevent 2 on 1, etc. fights and by finding a “hugging” partner so there’s no ganging up on one guy, even on accident. They do it because it’s fair. And it’s kind of cute sometimes.
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