Tom Harris deserves the world

Alex and Tom's friendship is my drug of choice

[ma-che-noia]

[theghostofashton]

that thing she says about people not liking or not understanding ilya is truly so damning and i don't know how she didn't see that tbh

it upsets you when people misinterpret his actions because you love him so much you know why he's doing these things even though people may get it wrong? shane, on the other hand.... he's selfish. he's just stupid. he doesn't understand the dark side of hockey. he's oblivious. agrees with the popular hc that he's autistic and then walks it back bc that resulted in people having empathy for shane (and also makes clear that it is ilya's responsibility to communicate more effectively to accommodate his partner, which we just can't have. ilya can't change his behavior to accommodate shane. it always has to be the other way around).

and then she wonders why people think she doesn't like shane like...... i have to laugh

[wordsonapage2]

One scene that always struck me as a little weird for a romance book was the first Vegas rooftop.

"Not everything is about you, Hollander." He didn't look at Shane at all when he said it. His voice hadn't been angry. He just sounded...tired. And sad. Shane studied his profile. His own anger left him, and he found himself caring about Ilya Rozanov, which was an odd sensation.

Characters misreading each other is a very common romance trope, like in Pride and Prejudice. Usually that's something that is eventually resolved as the characters come to know each other better, but Reid cannot stand for Ilya to be thought badly of by the audience even for a scene--even when the characters barely know each other at all. Instead, Shane has to have a perfect perception of Ilya's mental state (even though that directly contradicts her description of Shane's qualities) and immediately puts his own feelings aside to center Ilya's. See, Ilya isn't being a jerk, reader, Shane is concerned about him so you should be too!

It happens in the Sochi scene as well.

Rozanov was being an asshole, which was nothing new, but he didn’t seem to mean it. In fact, Shane would bet that Rozanov would actually really like him to stay. He looked like he could use a hug.

Shane and Ilya literally never spend any time together outside of a quick hookup a few times a year, but here he's able to perfectly read Ilya through his attempts at masking to read a complicated hidden desire. And this is a particularly annoying thing to me when she made that stupid list and said that Shane isn't observant or perceptive. Because it means that Shane's not reading Ilya because Shane is good at reading people, but because Reid cares more about how the reader perceives Ilya than she does about Shane's characterization. In these novels, Shane can never be mad at Ilya when Ilya is actively trying to hurt Shane's feelings, because Reid has Shane constantly able to perfectly understand the source of Ilya's behavior and his true desires. And then she has Shane prioritize that over his own feelings, because the most important thing to her is for the reader to feel like Ilya's hurtful behavior is minimized and not actually harmful. Shane is given no space or grace for his own feelings, because the narrative doesn't consider them important.

[ragehangover]

this post truly wrinkled my brain because yes. obviously shane is given power by the author to a) perfectly understand ilya’s motivations to flatten the complexity of their relationship and b) always be utterly accepting of anything ilya does, acting as a pseudo-audience insert that will forgive ilya in absentia. shane hollander has divine providence as an ilyawhisperer until the author wants to take the opportunity to punish him for being selfish and stupid. shane understands that ilya will never hurt him and does not feel literally any negative emotion about being shoved against a wall by his partner during an argument and then kicked out of the house because the author rachel reid does not want her audience to feel literally any negative emotion about shane being shoved against a wall by his partner during an argument and then kicked out of the house

she cannot let ilya be misunderstood, and by virtue of this his actions always have sincere, unselfish motivations. this also harms ilya’s existing character!! during this fight, he thinks: “Ilya didn’t want to fight. He was exhausted, and miserable, and his boyfriend was breaking his fucking heart.” there is almost no reflection on ilya’s part about his actions aside from ‘he was sure he’d never hurt shane.’ zero internal interrogation. ilya is not curious about what shane might be feeling in the moment. ilya also does not really consider what might have informed this escalated reaction from himself

meanwhile, shane’s reaction to this fight is:

“Obviously he had fucked something up. He hadn’t been paying attention to Ilya, or to what Ilya had given up for him, and he now realized that Ilya had given up a whole fucking lot for Shane. For them. Of course he resented Shane. Ilya had left his home country, his family—even if only a brother he hated remained—his team, his friends in Boston, his entire fucking life, really. He’d changed everything.”

hey shane maybe reread heated rivalry because in that book ilya leaves his family and russia because he hates them, left boston because he wanted a passport and explicitly did not have friends or a community there, and went to ottawa because montreal couldn’t afford him. except now it is entirely framed as shane’s fault, by shane, ilya and the narrative itself. shane had been paying attention to ilya, and ilya had been both deflective and hostile! why are we reducing the one (1) non-white hockey player of significant importance in this series to revolve entirely around the feelings of his white partner? there is no depiction of shane’s perspective external to what ilya thinks. shane is the emotional gonad to ilya’s story, because if shane was granted any objective opinion on the situation it might risk making ilya’s headspace slightly more complex than a jar of mild store brand salsa mix.

[bewbin]

dude honestly shout out to my guards i told them to seize this guy and before i could even finish my sentence they soze him. My goats

[blans]

Jannik Sinner ☆ Ballet — @ivan_mesh_ on instagram

[userfish]

hey you 🫵 have you washed your water bottle lately? 🫵 it’s getting hot and mold is going to grow 🫵 wash it 🫵

[sentimentalslut]

trying to explain to tumblr that the Middle Class in not their enemy

[sentimentalslut]

saw someone say that someone complaining about only having 7k in savings makes them contemplate “doing something bad”

you know that 7k covers like. one hospital visit WITH insurance, right?

[sentimentalslut]

“people who make six figures shouldn’t be allowed to complain —“ most people who make six figures are, these days, solidly middle class. where i live, a combined household income of $110k is *lower middle class*.

“people who can afford homes —“ are typically 400-600k in debt for them. also if “can own your own home” is your threshold for the rich you are contemplating eating, i think you are genuinely stupid

“boohoo your investments dropped, stop complaining rich boy” idk how to tell you this but. most of us have a retirement account. you should probably open one

[dirt-mann]

[ismenes]

you know those studies showing that cursing helps with pain tolerance or whatever. that’s how i feel about making my weird little noises to get through my basic daily activities. sometimes you just have to go hggblaaaah for a minute so you can find the strength within yourself to get up or wash the dishes or send an email. mmmnneh. urgh. the torments are unending but you can always make some little sounds about it.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

I love the sochi outing au for so many reasons (like omg it has Obama rpf and hollonov are having their everlark plot) but my favourite thing about it is that Shane's ending is so much better than canon. He gets to keep his dream of staying at montreal!! He's going to retire there!! That's his city!! This version of Shane is probably more traumatised then Canon and yet the ending is so much better that it really goes to show just how bad the tlg ending is. For so many reasons but also bc it ruins the hr ending for me. The reason shane brings up ottawa is bc they can afford to pay ilya what he's worth, he can be captain there, and he can be the first line centre. The fact that apparently none of this matters to ilya when he suggests Shane moves to ottawa just makes him look like a massive dick and also makes me think that ilya should just have gone to montreal at the end of hr. "Oh but the rivalry means - " if people found out Shane got Ilya to come to montreal they would be high fiving him on every street in the city. Ahhhhhhhh thank you for writing aus that are saving me from this dog shit ending that I pretend is not real

YOURE SO RIGHT THOUGH

In the books, when they’re talking about Ilya switching to a Canadian team, Ilya proposes leaving Boston for a Canadian team himself. It is brought up explicitly because America is bad for Russians at the moment, and he wants non-Russian citizenship. And during the conversation, Ilya has this moment where he can tell Shane wants him to come to Montreal, but Ilya doesn’t want to because Montreal could never afford both of them. Ilya says “Not Montreal,” and Shane immediately understands. He proposes Ottawa as an alternative because it needs a star center and has the cap space for Ilya.

And, critically, I cannot find a single mention of the fact that Ottawa is a bad team in Heated Rivalry itself.

Like. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I can’t remember any mention of the fact that Ottawa is terrible. I pulled up the pdf of the book and searched couldn’t find a single mention of the word “Centaurs” in it. I searched every mention of the word “Ottawa” and couldn’t find a single mention discussing how Ottawa was a bad team. The closest we get is Shane saying that they need a star center, but still needing a star for one position is a very different thing than it being the shittiest team in the whole league. And you’d think that Ilya would maybe bring up the fact that that team is absolute ass and would destroy his career if he went there if that was a legitimate concern. The Long Game rewrites its own canon to victimize Ilya and make Shane the villain in the Ottawa move. Its claims are fundamentally and irrevocably inconsistent with the explicit text of Heated Rivalry.

The entire dialogue around Shane being selfish in the Ottawa move drives me absolutely raving insane because it is fundamentally based in revisionist history. Shane is at no point in the conversation a driving factor in Ilya’s decision to leave Boston. Ilya decides he wants to be on a Canadian team before he even talks to Shane. The fact that he wants to come to Canada specifically is because of Russia, not Shane. And picking Ottawa is for the sake of Ilya’s career.

Signing with Montreal is outright considered and rejected by Ilya so he doesn’t have to take a pay cut. The explicit reason why he doesn’t want to sign with Montreal is the fact that Montreal cannot afford both of them. And that decision is later recast entirely into Ilya picking Shane over hockey. If Ilya wanted to pick Shane, he would have just taken the pay cut in heated rivalry and they would have been playing on the same team since fucking 2018–and it would have been on a team that Ilya himself describes as “the most legendary team in the entire league.” He would have had a great team and been tearing it up winning Stanley Cups but he didn’t want to take the pay cut or hit to his captaincy and his position and Shane fucking understood that and found him an alternative that wouldn’t require him to sacrifice his own position.

They explicitly pick Ottawa so that Ilya’s career doesn’t have to suffer and then the Long Game revises the entire narrative to turn it into how Ilya sacrificed his career for Shane. It is absolutely nonsensical when read in light of their conversation around the move itself. They outright reject playing on the same team so Ilya doesn’t have to sacrifice his own career.

And then!! All of the reasons why Ilya shouldn’t have to sign with Montreal suddenly do not matter at all when it’s Shane who has to suffer them. Shane has to take a pay cut? Laugh it off. Hubby will provide. He loses his entire career as narrative punishment for “making” Ilya sacrifice his career, but signing with Ottawa was explicitly so that Ilya wouldn’t have to sacrifice his career. Ilya actually does what Shane is accused of and villainized for in The Long Game, and Shane never did it to begin with. I feel like I’m being gaslit by an entire fucking fandom. Can anyone hear me hello

Shane gets to keep his team in the Sochi outing au. He gets to retire there. I put him through so much shit in the sochi outing au, but he gets to keep his team. I am building him a dream team in my mind and it will be so fucking narratively fulfilling so help me god

[goldensunset]

>‘this thing is too generic and tropey’

>look inside

>forefather of that genre

[firestorm09890]

[frankbelloriley]

[richyjerimovich]

Who Even Am I? with the cast of The Odyssey

[briannyssey]

Oh easy mistake. Yearning actually rises from the floor and longing hangs from the ceiling

[briannyssey]

🥺🥺

[tastylemonbread]

friend who went to bed is a type of dead wife

[didderd-reblogs]

[gameraboy2]

"I'm on the moon!" 1969 Snoopy button

[polarthebearisalive]

imagine alex rider if MI6 had given him a gun. half the series wouldn’t exist 😭😭

also, the fact that they’re willing to give alex literal buzz saws and bombs but not GUNS is js stupid. mind you, alex does not have a no-kill rule. he’s killed plenty of people and still lays his fair haired head on his pillow every night. pretty sure the only time he lost sleep was when he thought jack was dead

[prestidigitationjiggerypokery]

i hope the running joke and whole concept of avengers doomsday is someone going “i know a guy” over and over until everyone in the mcu ever is involved

[phantomrose96]

Hey kids, you need to start worrying a little less about getting “#mogged” and a little more about getting “#smogged”. This is an Air Quality Index public service announcement.