there's still so much to see

Polly, 27, Brasil. inactive but occasionally liking stuff.

[inbabylontheywept]

People are so much more sad, and desparate, and lonely than you think. I have had three incidents in the last four months were a technician I was working with was being either dangerously unfocused (we work with high voltage), or just flat out angry with their coworkers, and every time when I just pulled them aside to say hey, this isn't you, you're nice, and you're competent, so something must be up - what can I do to help - they have responded by bursting into tears. One guy was struggling to get his wife moved into a care home, one guy just got served divorce papers, and the other hadn't slept a wink the night before because his daughter had the pukes.

I haven't spent my whole life responding to people being rude, or stupid, or dangerous with knee jerk compassion. It's a new habit. The first time I did that as the lead for my lab, it was because the guy genuinely was so good natured that I knew something had to be off. But the other two times were just me going, alright, lets see if it always goes this well, and so far, it has. I'm almost 30, and I just figured out that the #1 reason people are shitty are because they are going through shit.

I don't think you have, like, a moral obligation to respond to people being jerks with knee jerk compassion. But it has made my life so much easier the last four months that I would recommend trying. For your own sake. Please.

(I'll step off my soapbox now. Enjoy your Sunday.)

[anarchopuppy]

practice soft skills. shit is going to keep getting worse for a good while before it starts getting better. we need to be making an active effort to show ppl grace and kindness and understanding now, bc were all going thru it, and maintaining community is only gonna get more and more important from here on out. this isnt optional, its a survival skill

[piwonplaylist]

should probably also post my hollanova art here too

[jesterlesbian]

HEATED RIVALRY 1x05 "I'll Believe in Anything"

[natalieironside]

Due to my weird childhood and my weird brain, I have this very unhelpful compulsion to conceal Everything I do from Everyone. I Cannot be observed performing any action, no matter how mundane. My nervous system is convinced I'm gonna, like, Get In Trouble for eating food at dinnertime or sleeping in my bed at bedtime.

I've taken to asking myself, "Okay does this task actually require subterfuge or am I stealing a balloon on Free Balloon Day"

[thisfeebleheart]

Heated Rivalry season 1: favorite added scenes

[yrsonpurpose]

So maybe they had picked up things about each other over the years, without really trying.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I rarely bring this up because it feels like fairly silly and low-stakes compared to all the other effects of american imperialism, but one of the funniest things when Americans deny that living in the imperial core and the center of global cultural hegemony confers them any sort of privilege over people from the imperial periphery is that like. In order for this conversation where you tell me you have no privilege over me to even be able to take place one of us had to learn the other's language, and it wasn't you.

I think the fact that by default the onus of learning the other's language to enable communication is always put on the other side is a pretty significant privilege on the cultural front.

[ilikemarthajones]

Tags via @thriceandonce

[littlegirlinvisible]

# ILYA ROZANOV IS A COMEDIAN  

CONNOR STORRIE as ILYA ROZANOV HEATED RIVALRY (2025—)

[wistfulcynic]

@sunsetandevningstar(love the URL btw!!) i'm putting this on main because it is a *great* question and something i really wish fic writers would just stop doing.

the answer is that not only is this unrealistic it's actively bad! Translating severely impedes fluency, it's something language teachers discourage enthusiastically and learning not to do it is one thing that distinguishes truly advanced speakers from high intermediate ones.

why is translating bad, you (general "you") may ask? Because it's a difficult and imperfect art. If you've ever read a book in translation, try reading a different translation of it. It can feel like reading a different book entirely. Translating impedes fluency because if you're thinking in your native language and then trying to translate into the target one, you're going to immediately run into a word you think you don't know, because you can't directly translate it. Because! Translating directly, word-for-word from one language to another is virtually impossible. Languages do not work like that. So instead of translation, speakers must learn how to express their ideas using the words they know in the target language, without passing them through the intermediary of their native language. This is vital, and it is not easy.

so you are absolutely correct that fully proficient people ("fluent" carries a different meaning in language learning lexicon) don't translate. They understand, and they communicate. That is the primary hallmark of proficiency.

it's so interesting that your mother needs time to reacclimatise to her native language, this is also a common phenomenon. Native language(s) live in a different part of the brain than acquired ones, and multilingual people learn the ability to leap from one part of their brains to another when they switch languages. This is a difficult trick to master and people tend to find that if they spend a long time in one language it gets harder to go to the other, whether that language is native or acquired. Maintaining multiple languages requires regular practice with all of them, which is why learning a bit every day is better than learning a lot sporadically. Years ago, i read an article about this, not sure if i can find it again but if i do i will reblog with a link, your parents might find it interesting.

so, PSA to fic writers, an ilya who's been in the US for years is definitely not translating in his head. In fact, i'd argue that if he ever does that he stops pretty early on in his rookie season. We should also not forget that ilya is a chatty guy. He is very good at knowing precisely what to say to get under people's skin on the ice. Verbal communication is a real skill of his. This means he has both a vested interest in and a talent for linguistic breadth and flexibility. Please don't hurt my bi(lingual) king by writing him as someone who can barely stumble through an english sentence. He is a very cunning linguist (bad joke, valid point).

thanks for asking!

[wistfulcynic]

#do you think he still might have struggled finding English words and concepts to truly explain his feelings#or do you think that’s more an emotional barrier than a language barrier#or both#interesting

@themoonandmyman great questions and if you don't mind i'd like to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the russian phone call scene.

so there are a lot of factors that can affect lexical recall (the ability to find words, basically) and things like heightened emotional state, mental fatigue, and stress are huge among them. No matter the level of ability, there are definitely going to be times when a person struggles to express themself the way they want to. Even in our native language we can struggle with that when we're really stressed or angry or upset. Plus, as i mentioned before, ilya is a very verbal person and this ironically can make someone less able to engage in a learned language because they get so frustrated that they can't match their level of fluency and precision in their native one. i think we see that very clearly with ilya. He is really excellent at english but in his own mind he isn't, partly (my headcanon) down to residual trauma from a harsh tutor but more clearly because he feels like he isn't saying precisely what he wants to say. He is feeling the translation gap between what's in his head and what he can form in english. The reality is he's expressing himself perfectly well with the tools that english gives him but what's important is that he feels like he isn't.

and this is what i love so so much about the phone call. Not only because it's fucking romantic and beautifully performed but because ilya says english is too hard right now and shane just rolls with that. No judgement, not even any teasing, he just says okay well if english isn't working for you say it in russian instead. Because he knows that what's important is that ilya says it. That attitude from his favourite person in the world would, i am telling you, lift a huge weight off ilya's shoulders. He's admitted a weakness in an area he's super sensitive about and he's not being criticised for it. Because he shouldn't be! He's stressed and exhausted so of course english is too hard. That's very very normal. And shane's instinctive understanding and accommodation of it is just beautiful to me.

(nb that book!shane is french/english bilingual, but it's implied at least that he was raised that way and people raised with two languages have a different experience with and attitude towards their languages than people who learn their second language as adults. So it's not a given that shane would understand this from his own experience. i think he just gets it because he gets ilya and wants to make things better for him)

so the short answer to your questions is yes, there would still be times when ilya struggled to find the right english word, sometimes because of stress or emotions and sometimes because he'd be trying to express a concept that doesn't really say itself well in english. Some words are untranslatable. And he probably gets in his own way at least a little bit by letting his frustration with not being as good at english as he is at russian get the better of him.

[yowlthinks]

All of the above is very much correct, both from scientific evidence and also from my own lived experience. Yes, there can be some awkward phrasings / direct translations now and then, but overall noone constantly translates in their head .

One more thing to add here is that there are some phrases that reflect what you mean so precisely, that you might struggle to find a complete equivalent in another language. And we see this in TLG, where Ilya sometimes inserts an English phrase when talking to his therapist. This is exactly because by this point he is pretty much fluent in both and because they (Ilya and Galina the therapist) both speak these languages, he uses the phrase that carries the precise meaning best. I would expect Ilya and Svetlana to slide into this as well.

Overall, it is incredibly freeing when you can just talk and use whatever phrase fits best in whatever language and know that you will be fully understood.

[wistfulcynic]

on ilya rozanov and the english language

i wish i had the time to write out the full meta on this that lives in my brain but the short version is this: his english is really fucking good

i have been an EFL teacher for 20 years and he's better than 98% of the people i've taught. Don't be distracted by the occasional missed article or word he needs to double-check in the dictionary, this boy has been dropping advanced grammar like it's nothing from the very beginning.

the very first thing he says to shane,"You will not be so nice when we beat you," is grammatically perfect and contains:

a modal verb indicating the future (will)

correct negation and base verb form (not be)

an adverb of degree modifying an adjective (so nice)

a relative pronoun introducing a defining relative clause (when)

an idiomatic use of the verb 'beat'

and this is when he'd barely spent any time among english speakers! By the time he's been with boston for a few seasons, his english is genuinely outstanding, easy and fluent and grammatically complex. Yes, there will always be some things he doesn't know and yes there will be times when he struggles with it (stress, exhaustion, frustration, all of these are factors in the ability to produce a second language) but when you're writing his dialogue here are some vital points to remember:

ilya himself is a very unreliable narrator when it comes to his english abilities. He canonically hates his accent and sees its existence as a personal failing. He has insanely high expectations for what he should be able to do in english but feels he can't. This is, and i cannot emphasise this too strongly, *very normal* for high-level language learners. The more you learn the more you realise you don't know, and the more you try to express complex ideas and run up against your own roadblocks the more frustrated you can become. People are genuinely very bad at assessing their own foreign language ability and ilya is no exception.

the show itself tells us repeatedly that ilya's english sucks even when it very clearly does not. Shane's comments about it rolling off his tongue and asking him if he used google translate have zero basis in reality. The show tells us he's bad while showing us he's good, believe what you're shown.

i'm gonna bet that neither rachel reid nor jacob tierney has any practical experience with english second language learners that could guide them in making ilya's english more authentic to the standard learner experience. This is fine, since his language ability is in no way the point of the show but it does mean that the disconnect between what's told and what's shown isn't intentional. Which means that fic writers absolutely could choose to ignore what's shown and write ilya as having more difficulties with english than we witness him having. But! If you do this, please, please do it with intent. Do some research on what russian speakers actually struggle with in english*. Don't just have him leave off every single article and call it a day. And if you are a native english speaker who speaks zero other languages, check your prejudices and actually listen to what he says and how he says it before you start typing.

seriously. This fandom has so many good fics already, like genuinely outstanding ones, but i can count on the fingers of one hand the ones i've read that represent ilya's english accurately to how it's portrayed in the show. Let's do better.

*the standard professional reference for EFL teachers is a book called Learner English by Michael Swan and Bernard Smith. It's got a very comprehensive section on russian learners and i am happy to share a .pdf copy with anyone who wants one. Shoot me a DM.

[sillybillytime]

Ilya has basically perfect English by the time the show ends. He has an accent, but his phrasing, articles, etc are all spot on. And he does this in like 2 years. That’s incredible! If you are portraying Ilya from about 2008-2011 it would make sense for him to mess up more, but after that he’s fully fluent. His primary language from then on is English, he speaks it every day, he hears it constantly, he’s fully immersed.

Another thing I’ve noticed in fics is Ilya texting incorrectly. This never happens in the show. He’s clearly quite deliberate in his writing. This is common, it’s often easier to catch mistakes in writing than it is in speech.

[wistfulcynic]

reblogging for this excellent addition and also to add some tips, as yesterday i read a fic that was SO good except for the ilya dialogue (and no, i am not sharing the link, sorry to my fellow haters but i’m not trying to shame anyone here. It’s not easy to think about this stuff sometimes!)

THINGS TO REMEMBER WHEN WRITING ILYA DIALOGUE:

the BIG THING: ilya never gets verb tenses wrong. Like never never. He also never leaves off the -s on the third person singular.

What Not To Write ❌: “Scott Hunter lose to Montreal yesterday. He always play very badly because he is old.”

CODA to the Big Thing: by the time we get to the cottage episode ilya’s grammar is hella complex. For example: “Your phone has been ringing all morning.” Present perfect continuous, a tense that gives headaches to EFL students worldwide. Ilya doesn’t have to think about it. Consider also: “She would have loved you.” Third conditional, universally reviled by english learners. Not ilya rozanov.

in short, Do Not Write him making basic grammar errors. He does not.

so what does he do?

ilya:

✅ occasionally omits articles. More frequently the indefinite one (a,an) less frequently the definite one (the). Articles are a PIA for people whose native language doesn’t have any (russian) but they of course are taught them when they learn english and especially would have practiced cases such as superlatives (the best hockey player in the world) and teams (the boston raiders) just as two examples ilya is unlikely to get wrong.

✅ misses out contractions. So he says will not instead of won’t, I am instead of I’m, you are instead of you’re, etc. Please note that this is significantly reduced by episode 5.

✅ omits the impersonal subject pronoun “it”. This is the most striking characteristic of his speech and something absolutely to include to make his dialogue sound authentic to him. Example: “Hollander, is okay. Do not panic so much.”

the SECOND THING: ilya and vocabulary.

again, his vocabulary is wide-ranging. Please remember that he knew the meaning of compatible in ep5, he just looked it up to double check. He would not forget basic words. Please do not fall into the heffalump trap that HR pushed grigori into, eg “He is, how you say, lazy.” That line is cliche and frankly dumb. No one talks like this.

(i also firmly believe ilya knew what “narrative” meant, he was just being a bitch because shane woke him up)

HOWEVER it is a very real, very valid thing that external factors such as tiredness, stress, overstimulation, etc can affect a person’s ability to produce a second language. This DOES NOT MEAN they are bad at speaking it. Ilya not understanding the convoluted question at the press conference and his inability to express complex feelings when he’s stressed AF after his father’s funeral, these are not indicative of a general low level of english. So if you write ilya sliding a bit in times of heightened stress or even pretending to be worse than he is to fuck with people, that is frankly very sexy of you and him.

(please reblog this version to spread the language pedantry)

[strangerinsidethetardis]

also: bilingual people rarely need to "translate" something in our heads; that's the point of learning another language

[ily-a]

I don't deserve you. Yes, you do.

Ilya Rozanov & Svetlana Vetrova HEATED RIVALRY (2025-)

[lavenderprose]

As a married person I do need to tell you all that Shane and Ilya do weird shit all the time.

They routinely have entire conversations where Ilya is very softly smacking Shane's foot the entire time. Shane enjoys the percussive feedback.

Ilya mispronounces the word "Application" and they just sit there mutually whispering 'Aaap-li-caaa-shun' at each other for the next thirty seconds.

Ilya comes up behind Shane while he's trying to make a smoothie and says 'HELPING HANDS' and puts his arms under Shane's armpits.

Ilya sees Shane undressing in the bathroom and yells, "Take it all off!"

Shane carries Anya into the bedroom and holds her over Ilya's chest and moves her paws and says, "Papa it is me. Papa it has been an whole hour since I ate. Papa I am so hungry and sad." then drops her on his stomach.

Shane comes into the home office and grabs a pen off the desk and puts it against Ilya's cheek and says, "Any last words?" and Ilya says, "I wish I had eaten more dumplings."

Ilya spends an entire episode of House Hunters International with his hand down Shane's pants. It's not doing anything in there either it's just keeping warm.

Sometimes they are just mutually awake at three AM for No Reason and they go stand on the porch and stare at the empty street together.

Sometimes they are laying there playing footsie on the couch while on their phones (Parallel play) and Shane says, "Does your mouth ever do that squeezing thing. You know. When you eat." And Ilya says "Explain" and they spend the next ten minutes dissecting whether this is a Human Experience or a Shane Experience.

Sometimes Ilya will put his head on Shane's stomach and say, "Show me your boooones" and wait for Shane to lift his shirt so he can burrow under it.

I just think that we as a fandom need to embrace how Weird married people get about each other. From personal experience I am telling you it is SO FUN.

[caitmayart]

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT  TW: DEATH, BLOOD, VIOLENCE D20 Neverafter Eps 3+4 

I’m more in love with this series every episode I’ve watched 3 and 4 TWICE now holy SHIT the weaving and the background and the absolute mind-numbing d r e a d 

 I love it.

[t-hirstreview]

Pappy's rules for living

[charlesoberonn]

Concept: Depressing dystopian factory where everything is gray and samey and the workers are called by their employee numbers by an ominous deep voice.

But it's a really great place to work with high salaries, excellent benefits, and a flexible working schedule with plenty of paid leave. They just like the dystopian aesthetic.

[charlesoberonn]

PA system: Worker 72094. Leave your working station and report to the Supervisor immediately.

Supervisor: Worker 72094. You failed to meet your quota for 3 weeks in a row now.

Worker 72094: I can explain!

Supervisor: You're clearly burned out. I heard you moved recently. Take a mandatory two weeks paid vacation to readjust and report to me then.

Worker 72094: I... thank you?

[charlesoberonn]

Shadowy Board Member: Worker 11335. Do you know why you were summoned?

Worker 11335: Is it because I badmouthed the company during lunch?

Shadowy Board Member: That is correct. We are very displeased, Worker 11335...

Shadowy Board Member: ...with ourselves, that is. We hold ourselves to high standards of excellence which we clearly failed to meet. We were hoping you could advise us on necessary improvements. You will receive appropriate compensation, of course.

[sootchild]

Burrow's End episode 6 moments. AHHHH! That last roll of the session.

Ep5 || Ep7

Astral Arms Jaysohn

[sootchild]

I thought it would be good to focus on snuggles and Thorn for ep 3.

Ep2 || Ep4