I just remembered "love, simon" in october 2021 and like... HOW is one guy coming out as GAY, not trans, not nonbinary, not pan, but cigender white male gay such a big fucking deal? Like HOW. And HOW is there only one other openly gay person in the whole school???

There's probably a group of actual queer kids on that school. It includes all sexualities and genders that just dgaf about everybody. They just rolled their eyes about this whole incident and went on with their lives, noticed by nobody cuz nobody really cares and Simon is, let's be honest, a straight guy who happened to like guys. Like, his personality is straight. You get me.

I know this take has been done million times before but I wanted to word this myself. Love, Simon is a cool movie, but it's not for the gays, Simon is gay done for the straights

Edit: just to make clear, as i thought it is but whatever, I'm not equating being cis gay guy with not being queer (wtf thatd be so shitty), what I meant by "actual queer kids" is "queer people who aren't cardboard cutouts of a straight person made gay for the one specific medium so the straights can still be comfortable with them while the queer audiences struggle to relate". I get how it might be an important movie to some people, especially the baby gays, and I'm hspoy for them, but I'm just so tired of popular queer media catering more to the straights than the gays almost ALWAYS

With the recent Troy and Harris casting announcements, I have seen a lot of people casually (or sometimes even very confidently) talking about things that just don’t happen in the books as if they did. All of these stem from various speculations of “it would be intriguing/interesting/funny IF this thing happened” becoming “this thing DID actually happen,” which sometimes even goes further and gets warped in the world’s worst game of fandom telephone into “I am literally forming my perception and analysis of this character over this thing (that did not happen at all.)” 

It is perfectly okay to not read the books, but I would really REALLY caution non-book readers to be careful with what they discuss unless it stems from an actual excerpt from the text.

This is not me gatekeeping. (Please! Go read the books! If you’re unsure of where to start, I would recommend reading Role Model first, which gives proper context for The Long Game) This is me attempting to counteract the misinformation that has only grown tenfold since Troy and Harris were cast.

With all that being said, a list of things that Did Not Happen In The Books: 

• Troy is not racist. This is a reasonable conclusion to draw, that a homophobic bully could also be racist, but there is no textual evidence of this. 
• On that note, Troy does not hatecrime Shane. Troy actually does not have any direct interactions with Shane at all. The closest they come to speaking with each other is when they’re on the ice at the same time during an Ottawa v. Montreal game. (*EDIT: they do have a conversation at the wedding)
• Ilya does not hate Troy. Like all of the Centaurs, Ilya is wary and uncertain about Troy at first. He’s annoyed with the situation surrounding the trade, and he definitely hates Dallas. But he does not hate Troy. 
• I hate to break everyone’s hearts, but... Troy does not ask Ilya for Shane’s number. Troy thinks about doing this, but doesn’t actually follow through. This concept is so funny that I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually does this in the show. This is the actual excerpt from the book:

season 2 should start with a cold open of troy barret being at his lowest, absolutely most awful behaviour. give me a five minute compilation of him cheering at dallas kent throwing slurs, of troy insulting fellow players maliciously, of them tormenting ryan price in the plane. and gimme glimpses of troy feeling conflicted, him avoiding his own eyes in the mirror, looking uncomfortable when dallas uses the f-slur but keeping his mouth shut. yes, I want to see him confronting dallas and calling him out later. but must importantly give me the absolute worst of troy, give me the ugly side because it is fucking important not only for his story but also for shane's and ilya's and we should see it right in the beginning.

we leave s1 in a kind of bittersweet but overall happy bubble. scott hunter is out and gets mostly positive resonance; shane and ilya are in love, even tho there a lot of obstacles in their ways but its all soft and glowy right. it could be so easy, the mhl suddenly becoming that happy queer friendly place, every player is supportive of their teammates, everyone gets their happy ending - so aside from their rivalry narrative, why are shane and Ilya even so worried of coming out? it kind of looks like fairytale doesn't it.

because it is definitely not. hockey is still a wildly homophobic sport, with decades of toxic masculinity, and troy's story shows us exactly that. s2 should definitely show us why it is still such a struggle for athletes, especially shane and ilya, to come out when there are teams that are still so openly and maliciously cultivate homophobia. yes, scott's coming out changed a lot for the better but it's far from good. we see that in the book that even many of his teammates don't come to celebrate with him. we see this later in the metro's abominable reaction to shane. dhowing how bad it still is in the toronto team right in the beginning creates the necessary contrast to the (lovely!) softness of the ending of s1 and shows the reality of the world shane and ilya live in (which is of course still better than our reality due to romance novel rules but yk) and it sets the tone for some relevant struggles ilya and shane face during The Long Game.

also, i really do like troy and I love his redemption arc but without seeing how bad he once was, his story wouldn't hit that hard, ngl. I really hope the long game gets two seasons and at least over the course of the first half, we see troy's and harris story. While Game Changer got it's own episode basically, I think it would work best if Role Model would get weaven into the plot of the second season / first half of tlg. of course shane and Ilya are the main story but I think it would work best showing bit and chunks of troy's character development here and there, how he build his relationship with harris and also his friendship with ilya.

so yeah in short, pls jacob give me 5 min straight of asshole Troy frist and then cut to Shane and Ilya and the rest of the gay mhl avengers working at the irina foundation.

In complete honesty, my belief in copyright and piracy is that studios need to make media available 24/7 or else they lose rights to it.

You want to stop making DVDs? Cool put it on a streaming service. Want to take it off streaming services? Cool start making DVDs. You don’t want to do either? Cool you can’t take people to court for burning it onto CDs or sharing it. That’s just keeping the media alive.

And none of this “well you can go on eBay and get it for $80” nope. You need to be actively distributing it.

Da'Vinchi & Matthew Daddario & Brandon Larracuente ⬪ Chicago Fire

ravi panikkar
season nine

there is a very specific type of political enlightenment when you allow yourself to acknowledge bad people can be attractive and funny and intelligent and still be bad people because those things don’t quantify morality

ANTHONY KEYVAN as Q Shabazian
"Never Been Kissed" — XO, Kitty (2.02)

re: Hollanov getting outed, narrative structure, and the story you want to tell

Stories (such as romance novels) are all about tension. There is a conflict which the characters are affected by and at some point, that conflict and the tension created by it as resolved (not always positively!). In romance novels, that conflict is also called "the barrier between them"¹ because the central problem is not whether the protagonists get together and live Happily Ever After, but how they overcome the internal or external obstacles that are keeping them apart at the beginning of the story.

In The Long Game, the main barrier between Shane and Ilya and their HEA is homophobia in hockey generally and the fallout of their relationship with each other as Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov specifically. This is an external obstacle that was already present in Heated Rivalry, but that book focused on how the external obstacle also created internal barriers, making them unable to believe that they could ever be together, and the resolution there is "we can't overcome the external obstacle, but we can accept that we love each other and that acceptance makes us happy." It makes a lot of sense for this story to focus on the internal conflict because the external conflict is basically insurmountable.

The Long Game has to end with Shane and Ilya publicly out and in a relationship with each other because this second HEA needs to be a progression from the first one, because otherwise the story stagnates. So there are three options for when in the book it happens: the beginning, the middle, or the end.

ALT

If the outing (labelled "bradgate" in the above, extremely scientific illustration) happens at the beginning of the book, it has to be the inciting incident for the story and the main conflict would then be about navigating the fallout of getting outed, leading to some kind of climax that resolves the resulting tension between Shane and Ilya and brings them back together.

If it happens in the middle of the book, there would still need to be a conflict leading up to it because otherwise there wouldn't be a story. So they would be not out for half the book, dealing with something else, then get outed and spend the other half of the book dealing with the fallout of getting outed. I'm sure it would be possible to make this work somehow, maybe if the first half was also about information being leaked, but generally this would be bad storytelling practice for genre fiction and especially romance, which prioritises the protagonists' relationship over external plot and therefore usually keeps the latter to a minimum.

The third option, the one we ended up with, positions getting outed as part of the resolution to the tension created by the protagonists' relationship. The Long Game primarily revolves around Shane and Ilya realising that their previous HEA doesn't work for them anymore and trying to negotiate what they want (to stop having to hide their relationship) with the external obstacle represented by the league and the threat to their careers and safety. By the time they are outed against their will, they have already decided to come out themselves in a couple of months and are so secure in their relationship that they are willing to accept the negative consequences. Bradgate then functions to increase the stakes so the story doesn't just trickle towards an ending (if they had been in control and come out after the season ended, the realistic and in-character plan, the outcry wouldn't have been so immediate; it would all have happened online and in meetings with lawyers during the off-season, which would be boring to read about).

If The Long Game started with Shane and Ilya being outed against their will, it would be a very different book. Diving deeper into the consequences and backlash would be a really compelling and emotionally intense story, but it would be a complete tonal shift from the rest of the series, which prioritises queer joy as an empowering force while acknowledging the limitations of the main conflict (homophobia in men's sports). The Long Game as it was published instead centres the protagonists growing both as individuals and as a couple so that they are able and ready to stop hiding, because they love each other and are choosing their love over the potential negative consequences. All of the couples in the series actively choose to be together (and the closeted characters choose to be open about their queerness) because that's what makes them happy and gives them the kind of life they want, and The Long Game ultimately lets Shane and Ilya make that same choice before Bradgate accelerates their timeline.

As a book, it definitely has its flaws! Not every part of it is executed as well as it could be and the constraints of the genre mean the ending feels rushed because there are a lot of loose ends to tie up. But Shane and Ilya were always going to be out and married at the end of it and the choices made in the construction of that narrative make perfect sense to me. This is not the only possible version of the story, nor is it the only good version of the story, but it is consistent with both the genre conventions and the author's other work and successfully does what it sets out to do.

¹Pamela Regis, The Natural History of the Romance Novel

Am I the only one who thinks the Hollanov relationship to the Hollanders parents can be weirdly depicted ?

I don’t know if it’s how American relationships work but from my point of view sometimes fic writers forget that sometimes they’re adult men. Like if Shane’s ill, Yuna isn’t coming to help him ? Especially since from what we see, Shane wants to be left alone sometimes (The conversation in the restaurant, the “I’m a fully grown adult”)

Even Ilya ! I agree “Mama Hollander” is very cute but not to be used all the time. I personally see it more like a fond nickname, not a true way he calls her all the time. The fics with family group chats where Ilya and Shane are behaving like teenagers are cute but ?? In the fact they’re in their thirties ?

Anyway, they’re both adult men, both in a steady relationship, can’t Ilya and Shane deal with their own problems together, as a couple ?

And most of all, the Hollanders have their own life, and job, and I don’t see why they’re always free and ready to help with whatever problem Shane and Ilya have ?