odos complex around relationships always gets me as an autistic person. the constant yearning and observing of people he want to be close to. but never actually taking action, because relationships are not for him, hes not humanoid, hes too different, he doesnt need it. but he watches anyway and takes time out of his day to make his schedule follow the people he wants to be around. he'll never admit that he does this, because it would be acknowledging that he wants, or even needs relationships.
stay positive: A story I just posted on AO3 about Shane using positive visualization techniques to imagine the best-case scenario in the week leading up to Ilya's arrival at the cottage. What I need you to understand about this story is that Shane Hollander's sex fantasies have salary cap implications.
At some point, I tried to think about what Ilya would do if asked to go through the same exercise. I think there's two options: 1) he literally holds his breath until he blacks out to avoid being forced to do this or 2) he conjures up a scenario where at the end of the two weeks they get married.
Love to try and figure out what Ilya was trying to achieve with the tuna meltdown, happy to read endless takes about that. Particularly because in the book, the last time we were in Ilya’s POV for any significant period of time was in 2014! (There’s two very brief scenes in Ilya’s POV between 2014 and post-tuna meltdown, the one where he thinks about being 30% gay and the one where he’s watching the cottage documentary.) So who the fuck knows what he was thinking.
Anyway, I know some people think he was trying to initiate an actual relationship or exclusivity, but I really don’t. His dad was still alive at that point, that just wouldn’t have occurred to him as an option. I think the most realistic option is that he was trying to move them from “this is just a one-night stand that somehow keeps happening over and over again” to friends-with-benefits. He’s talking about girls like “I have relationships in my life where we’re friends who also fuck, do you have relationships like that? We could have a relationship like that, maybe.”
This makes me think about an idea for a canon divergent story that I will probably never actually write because IDEK I’m allergic to angst, but:
Ilya does a slightly better job of explaining that he just wants them to be friends who fuck. He says something about how it seems like Shane could use more friends. Shane doesn’t freak out and leave. Shane still meets Rose, doesn’t try to date her but does get papped hanging out with her and Ilya texts him like “???” and Shane says “I thought you said I could use more friends.”
So they continue on relatively the same, they text a little more, Ilya spends the night that next game in Montreal. Maaaaaybe (we’re in book canon here) Shane actually lets him come over to his actual apartment. All-Star weekend is business as usual, there’s no cathartic conversation about Shane being gay, them being more or Ilya’s reasons why they can’t do that.
But then! After All-Stars, a reporter asks Ilya about playing on the same team with Shane for the first time. And Ilya is like “Rivalry has been going on for years, is boring. I think instead Shane Hollander and I are friends now.” And Ilya is just kind of swaggering his way through that being the new reality and Shane is like “Yeah … Rozanov is a great player” and wanting to murder Ilya a little bit but secretly not hating it.
But again, we have not had the wake-up call associated with losing it all after the tuna meltdown and Shane dating Rose, and we have not had the catharsis of the All-Stars conversation. When Ilya’s dad dies they text a little more but that’s it. When Shane gets injured, Ilya is able to non-secretively visit him, and that really cements the public friendship narrative. Scott still comes out, but both of them are like, “Well, that’s none of my business.” Shane doesn’t invite him to the cottage for the summer.
Next season, they can actually be friendly in public. They play a game against each other and get nagged into going out with one of their teams. And some girl starts hitting on Shane like crazy, to the point where he feels like he has to leave with her or it would seem suspicious. (See, you’d think Ilya would be the one getting hit on here, but he has enough confidence in his own track record to just be like “not interested tonight, bye” and Shane does not.) Shane somehow ditches the girl after they leave and doesn’t actually hook up with her, but it creates some kind of logistical difficulty that keeps him from being able to hook up with Ilya that night. And Shane is like, okay, if being Ilya’s friend in public comes at the expense at whatever the fuck we’re doing in private, no thank you, this is the worst.
So then the next time they see each other, Shane is like … “I DON’T WANT TO BE FRIENDS.” And this is the part where the plot starts to fall apart for me a little bit and why I’d probably never try to write this, because I can’t decide if Ilya takes him at his literal word and this throws them into this AU’s version of the Rose relationship torment nexus situation, or if Shane manages to say “I mean … I don’t want to be just friends.” So after some unspecified amount of torture and miscommunication Shane says that, and Ilya says, “Yeah, okay,” and that’s how they finally get together.
Unfortunately, in this AU Ilya’s “rivalry is over we are friends now” public psy-op is more successful than the charity rollout, and it’s easier for them to be seen together in public and that makes them sloppy and they get outed much, much sooner. It’s only after they literally get outed that Shane is forced to admit to himself or anyone else that he’s gay.
People love natives in such a superficial way. People wanna stand with natives when we’re talking about the trees, and the land. People wanna stand with natives when we talk about philosophies of love and togetherness. But as soon as it’s time to talk about political side of being native. About dismantling a system built on the genocide of our people. About how we need a new system that isn’t built upon capital gain and benefitting white bodies. About putting up a fight. About how the colonial state we reside in is a disgusting imperial plague on this land. Suddenly y’all don’t wanna talk native.
"They spent hundreds of years trying to assimilate my ancestors, trying to create indians like me, who could blend in, but now they don’t want me either. They can’t make up their minds.
They want buckskin and face paint, drumming, songs in languages they can’t understand recorded for them but with English subtitles, of course. They want educated, well spoken, but not too smart. Christian, well behaved, never question. They want to learn the history of the people, but not the ones that are here now, waving signs in their faces, asking them for clean drinking water, asking them why their women are going missing, asking them why their land is being ruined.
They want fantastical stories of Indians that used to roam this land. They want my culture behind glass in a museum.
Like say 'feel free to include your pronouns in your cover letter' sure! 'your cover letter must include your pronouns' 🙅♀️🙅♀️🙅♀️ friend you have not thought this through.
It is a similar issue to when they ask for a photo up front I think. Like no matter how well intentioned you are there's an obvious opening for discrimination. & You don't have to be consciously prejudiced to discriminate.
Also like with photos I do get it bcos obviously they want to publish author photographs in the magazine and don't want to be chasing them down (many magazines ask for your bio up front for this reason) but with pronouns it's like what do you need them for so badly?
Also literally what is stopping them from taking the way better, way easier, and more effective route of asking for data that could open them up to a discrimination lawsuit after they have made their hiring decisions?????
Every study I've seen has shown that the number one easiest most effective way to avoid racial discrimination in hiring is to blank out the candidate's names on their resume
If literary magazines actually want to fix racism or transphobia in publishing or the literary scene, they need to not require people give them information that will blatantly and unavoidably force many, many job candidates to reveal themselves as part of legally protected classes!!!
(aka: it's harder to reject a submission because someone is Black if you are given no information that could indicate their race besides the contents of their submission. every study shows you can't just Decide to Not Be Racist, that's not how prejudice works, as a great many people of color can tell you. whyyyyyyyy would we want to ask for more identity / physical appearance information as part of the hiring process we're trying to make LESS racist. etc. other bigotries. WHY)
When a young child, not yet 5 years old, contracts smallpox after surviving the horrors of war, injustice, and hundreds of deadly nights, amidst the sounds of planes and tanks, this is not a passing or simple illness
Imagine your child contracting this disease?! I'm writing this because my brother Ahmed was diagnosed with it on July 30, 2024, and his cries and suffering broke my heart. We searched every pharmacy and couldn't find any medication to ease his pain.
And so a new chapter of suffering has begun, a suffering I don't want to become a habit. Some of the same pimples have started to reappear on my brother Ahmed's back, and I ask you to stand with us and donate. Instead of money coming in to buy food, we're now spending it on medicine and displacement expenses. Your donation, however small, is a candle in the darkness, especially after donations to our fundraising campaign completely stopped. Donate to us via PayPal or GFM
Vetted! shared by @/90-ghost (also here), #77 on @/gazavetters vetted list, shared by @/gaza-evacuation-funds, shared by @/el-shab-hussein!
I have been in regular contact with Mohammed for almost 2 years now. Please help him and his family!The money will reach him quicker if you can donate through Paypal, which is managed by my friend who regularly sends the donations to Mohammed.
Hello, among the hundreds of tragic stories, I am sharing my painful sto… Mohammed Khalil needs your support for Help Ahmed Khalil's family
Help support sanae harika by donating or sharing with your friends.
As soon as Shane realized he was gay, that mf Locked In. He said, we need to get this relationship Sorted, hired a stylist, and showed up to All Stars weekend ready to lock down the best dicking he had ever gotten in his life. And it worked.
The trope where people don't recognize each other because it's been so long since they last interacted and they've both changed so much that they're basically strangers UNTIL one of them does their Signature Thing™ and the other just stops dead because oh. It's YOU. All at once it's so clearly you
vaporwave
pixelskylines
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
