Get REAL- Question everything!

SHEILA ATIM as Akasha

have not seen any AAC device vocabulary have words for any “private” body parts . can not tell caregivers about having a problem with some “ private “ body part . no pages for to talk about serious brain “trouble” either .

we people what use AAC devices are very most likely to be hurt by bad people because them people know we can not tell really what happened .

Pixie HAVE grid from smart box . Is been Pixies primary AAC device for years . Pixies original speech therapist STILL had add genitals to body page AND had find switch , buried in settings , for make grid actually show not - censored symbols . ( And also same same with all not - straight identity words too , because of same same censorship . )

Them words and symbols being available to children and especially intellectual / cognitive disability people , too often make not - disabled people so very uncomfortable , and so get excluded from default vocabularies . THAT is what this post was about , automatic censoring of people what use symbol based AAC devices . Grid not exception to this .

These these absolutely critically needed words need be include in all AAC devices AND make visible *by default* . No needing to dig through settings to find the switch that make these symbols appear . No needing ask for help put in these words .

🚨Safety Alert Australia

If you rely on a hidden phone for your safety, be aware that Australia’s new emergency warning system, AusAlert, can send alerts that override silent and “Do Not Disturb” settings.

If safe to do so, turn off any hidden device before the scheduled test and only switch it back on after the test period has ended.

*hands you a knife*

there are MANY very sophisticated Bot accounts pretending to be queer/trans/GNC and then having SHIT opinions and getting up in the Ask box.

there's a lot of poorly educated young people who do not understand nuance and want everything to be Very Binary to make them feel certainty. The want to be RIGHT. they ALSO want everyone else to Fall in Line.

in all seriousness- i treat every.single.comment as suspect - until they show an ounce of human decency. it's not on YOU- to bear the brunt of bad faith BS.

delete the ask. don't even read it. Assume it's total bot garbage.

Over the past few months I saw people fiercely defending and hating Hayden and JJ.

I need more nuances.

I dislike Hayden and JJ. I don't hate them.

First of all I want to say I believe the ones defending Hayden and JJ confuse them with Bood and Hazy. I also don't think the parallels are unintentionally choosen. Allyship is a spectrum.

For this part I want to use a famous comparison that went viral with sexism.

Allyship works similarly. And not every "ally" is the same.

So no as a queer person Hayden and JJ don't qualify as allies.

Hayden is reproducing harmful stereotypes with his son by telling him he can't wear nail polish after having a front row seat to seeing the problem of this culture. He is ok with JJ setting Shane up. He literally outed them. He is against the "uncle Ilya" name. He thought of Shane, his captain, as this "man", which is why he and JJ constantly try to set him up with feminie guys, when that image breaks for Hayden he is condescending towards Ilya. Ilya really doesn't chirp him that bad and only after feeling the walls. Ilya is incredible emphatic and perceptive. Hayden doesn't try to learn or speak up or respect or avoid assumptions.

Now to JJ. He first of all doesn't respect Shane when it comes to dating. He constantly pushed him. Even when being told to stop. He even talks about Shanes crush on Ilya and assumes Ilya is straight. Then when he does get more information, which Shane doesn't own him, he gets upset and makes this whole outing problem about himself. It feels shitty being left out? How about Ilya's struggle with the Russian law system, the fact that Shane had to hid for more than a decade. The pain. And he makes it about himself. Then he even encourages a discussion about Shane cheating. With a little bit of info suddenly JJ acts like Shane is not THE Shane Hollander anymore.

Obviously both are fine with Shane being gay in theory. Gay in book. But to see it, know it, to know his bf is another man. This. What queerness. That's tooooo much. He could have dated a twinky personal trainer. But like this?

I DON'T think Hayden and JJ are homophobic. But they aren't allies.

I also like this. It shows that the locker room and sports bubble does deal with deeply rooted homophobia, (and sexism and racism). It shows that you can have good intentions but still be flawed. It shows that good and bad aren't sides to be on. The world is colourful. So is support. It also shows us that we can think we are supportive but there is always room for improvement. In the end Hayden and JJ can only be so supportive. They won't seek it out. They aren't queer or woke like that. They are not gonna Nick Nelson google how to help with eating disorders. It's quite realistic.

Which is why I love the Ottawa centaurs so much. Because all the "difficult" aka queer, feministic, poc who don't play along guys play there. It gives us a great juxtaposition. Montreal Vs Ottawa. Toxic masculinity Vs healthy masculinity. It fits making mister russian always been chill about being bi on Ottawa and headmaster of proper full on gay crisis be Montreal. The shift from Montreal to Ottawa is important for Shane because it allows him to be himself. Which is why Ottawa married BAMF Shane ff are so healing.

I think we should see the depiction of allyship in HR as refreshing.

But so many straight people are keen on Hayden and JJ being good allies. And babes no. They aren't. They are in-between. Which is what a lot of people are. Fine with the gay, but does it have to be [Rozanov] [shoved up our nose] [taught in school?]. They wouldn't k!ll Ilya or Shane. They wouldn't verbally abuse them. But would they go the extra mile? No.

My less generous interpretation is that heated rivalry is so compelling *because* the love story is made more electric with bdsm, but it’s intentionally made more commercially successful through plausible deniability to not alienate/scandalize a wider audience. Dog whistling if you will, while cloaking some of the more misunderstood aspects of kink in scenes like the Vegas bathroom / penthouse with a level of emotional turmoil that gives viewers a way to opt out of (and in some cases, blame) the bdsm of it all.

So there’s one reading of those scenes where Ilya & Shane are roleplaying to artificially mask their true desire to be more emotionally vulnerable with each other. Like playing dress up to make things less intimate / real. It’s hot but it’s keeping their hearts safe. Reid’s Vegas bonus/blog chapter makes reading this scene a bit blurry, and I find it fascinating that she decided to include it/release it after the book was published — did she feel pressure to clarify that Ilya was actually acting out of fear in those scenes? Did that justify his particular flavor of sadism in that moment? I think that’s where the plausible deniability comes in.

Because for people who appreciate the sadism in those scenes, the way Ilya is acting feels more intimate than not. He’s trying to understand Shane and himself and the ways in which they are sparking this hunger thats gnawing gnashing growling inside them; when Ilya makes Shane pout and cry and Ilya hears the quiver in his voice when Shane’s shouting back at him, it’s Ilya’s way of finding the crack in the shields they’ve both been using to keep themselves safe. His sadism is getting them closer, and Shane’s submission to it is accepting that, rewarding that sharpness from Ilya with a softness he shares back. It’s not a crutch to avoid emotional intimacy, it IS their intimacy.

But it’s also tangled up in the emotionally devastating reality of their circumstances, they can barely get to know each other because they’re separated by the homophobia & racism & the injustices of their career, countries, families, and their respective traumas navigating all of that. So they’re bonding through sex without enough of Everything Else — communication, hanging out, casual mutual enjoyment — to fully support each other as much as they each need, and they hurt each other in the process. This is true whether or not sadism is the main driver of the scene, as evidenced by Ilya’s botched tunamelt-his-heart scheme, so it’s a bit of a double standard to say that ilyas sadism is less intimate / mature / loving than his “softer” side. But by giving the Vegas scenes an unhappy ending (Ilya not knowing how to ask for less emotionally charged pillow talk from Shane, Shane not knowing how to ask Ilya for a sweet kiss goodbye), there is an escape hatch for anyone viewing who doesn’t enjoy / want to enjoy their D/s dynamics.

The plausible deniability extends to how ilyas sadism is portrayed throughout his narrative arc as well. His demeanor during Shane’s first time anal is portrayed as gentle and encouraging and then he ghosts Shane for six months and the next time they fuck he’s big bad wolf-ing it, and Shane thumps his head on the elevator door and deletes his we didn’t even kiss text. It’s Good Ilya vs Bad Ilya and the bad Ilya is also kinkier. And then towards the end of the story, the domming and sadism become less stereotypical, which is refreshing for viewers who are enjoying the breadth of that portrayal, but can be more easily ignored by anyone who doesn’t want it. Ilya forcing giving Shane a blowjob while he’s on the phone with Hayden is crackling with sadistic electricity, but there’s giggling and the sun is pouring through the windows and they’re at the cottage they’re endgame they’re about to tell each other I Love You and anyone who isn’t looking for bdsm there doesn’t have to see it.

— youre right, it’s not a neutral act to ignore the kink. I guess what I was getting at is that it DOES feel anti-kink to ignore it and also the entity doing much of the work towards that action feels like the source material itself.

Like don’t get me wrong I love how the book and tv series are both very show-not-tell about the kink but ALSO the story is narratively putting scenes in an order that make it feel like there’s an emotional arc from bad kinky sad sex (vegas) to good nonkinky happy sex (the cottage). Vegas bathroom is my favorite scene of the show followed by Vegas penthouse but im in the minority in large part because it ends on a sour note. And the cottage has my third favorite scene with the phone call blow job. So to ME the arc does not feel like it goes from bad kinky sex to good nonkinky sex but again I think I’m in the minority with that read. At least what I’ve seen with mainstream interpretations of how the overall cottage vibes feel to most folks.

which is that so much of the For Those Who Have Eyes To See reading of this as a D/s love story, and most of why i am like, so genuinely emotionally invested in it is that the journey is not from more kink to less kink. it's a journey from less emotional connectedness to more emotional connectedness, as seen through the lens of crazy hot sex. it's not that there's less D/s as things progress between them, any more than there's less sex! but the D/s becomes emotional rather than exclusively sexual. it's no longer just "i'm gonna order you to beg to be touched in this bathroom," it's also "i'm going to pet you while you crouch at my feet." which is like, crazy! never seen before onscreen kink content! and for those of us who are knowledgeable about and perhaps personally invested in dominance and submission as a lifestyle and a cornerstone of relationships, the second thing is actually arguably kinkier because it's not sexual, because it explicitly shows that dominance and submission are simply part of how they relate to and love each other (everything is hollanov TPE)

but the average person i think has literally no idea that D/s even can be non-sexual and has never thought of waht it could potentially mean to people on an emotional level for someone to dominate and someone to submit. and so as the sex becomes warmer and the whole relationship including and maybe especially the kink becomes as much romantic as it is sexual, it's harder and harder to see it. and people are viscerally uncomfortable with power exchange, so they don't want to see it, and the show makes (and possibly has to make, given the constraints of the media ecosystem) room for a reading of their love story as this hayes-code-esque "and then they fell in love so they had normal sex forever instead of weird kinky sex, which is something only people who don't care about each other would do" as opposed to what i see, which is "and then they fell in love, in large part because ilya's dominance and shane's submission ultimately lead them to feel emotionally comfortable with and deeply connected to one another, and just like everything else about their relationship it no longer has to be sexual for them to allow themselves to have each other"

IMO, there’s clear arguments to made for D/s being present on screen (Vegas, for one), and more arguments for it being used as subtext (e.g. Shane kneeling at Ilya’s feet in the cottage comes to mind as being kink-coded in that specific way that vanilla audiences can write off, while in-the-know audience members will clock it as something more), but I think with fan discussions on the topic, you almost get a replication of the typical responses straight audiences give queer ones for daring to think a character might not be straight, but this time swapping ‘queer’ for ‘kinky’. Maybe even because they can’t argue that it isn’t gay, all that energy gets channelled into ‘well it may be gay, but it isn’t that kind of gay’ (cough respectability politics, cough cough)

I haven’t waded too far into the weeds of discussions like this, for obvious reasons, but I’ve definitely seen responses along the lines of ‘You’re reading too much into things’, ’why do you have to make everything about your gross perversions’, ‘the writers/actors/characters would never do such a thing!’, ‘just because you want Shane and Ilya to be kinky doesn’t mean they are in the show’, etc etc… which are all arguments I’ve seen used so many times against people daring to ship same-sex couples or to suggest a character might be LGBTQ when canon technically hasn’t said so. I do think there are levels to this, in the same ways there are levels to queer coding vs queer baiting vs head canons - probably, the dynamic on screen is maybe more mild than some fan interpretations give it credit for (which, to be clear, is not me being negative about those interpretations, I love seeing people read Hollanov that way and I do myself as well) - but there’s definitely this argument from certain parts of the fandom that says seeing any level of power exchange or kink on display is inherently fanon and not based on the text, which is just. Wrong.

And the worst part is, they are the the biggest gossips at the space mall you work at, so the price for their advice is knowing the entire station will know all about your stupidity.