kind of warm like a microwave

the closest thing to real soulmates you can find

we fought in the same trenches and have a warrior's bond that carries over into every stage of life

friend i sit next to in every class and pass notes to/whisper to constantly

academic peer/colleague that i respect and have a little intellectual crush on

neighbour in the same apartment block that i say hi to on the stairs

neighbour across the street who i wave at every morning and evening

we're regulars at the same bar

Not “My brother is terrible”

It’s “My brother is scared” and it’s because he’s scared that he acts terrible.

From what the audience has seen of his brother, he doesn’t deserve that kind of grace from Ilya. And yet, Ilya can look beyond his brother’s actions and words and see what’s at the core of him: a scared boy.

And then Ilya says, “It makes me terrible back.” Ilya doesn’t give himself the grace of saying something like, “I’m scared too. And it makes me terrible back.” Only that he acted terribly back at his brother. Yet all we’ve seen from Ilya is give his brother chance after chance and the only time we’ve seen him snap was when his brother insulted Svetlana.

for the record this is like 70% “i thought it was funny,” 15% boredom, 10% 2026 draft lottery trauma, and 5% continued efforts to stake our claim as most cursed team. anyway, cursed canucks web weave!!!

Shane as my dog Vinny

i speak english the most in day to day life and also think in english sometimes. my accent in english is americanized, pretty indistinguishable from a native (excluding sets of certain phonemes like /rl/) .

but if i’m really tired or spending time just around my wife (with whom i speak english), i sometimes switch to what i call ‘lazy english’.

what this usually consists of is i allow myself to speak english with the russian /r/ phoneme that is more natural for me, i drop articles, replace continuous and future tense with simple present, use the ‘….,yes?’ construct, avoid contractions (bc the verb ‘to be’ is dropped/implied in russian, so contractions aren’t always natural)

for example, when i’m in ‘lazy english’ mode, this is how my speech varies:

‘i’m making the bed’ = ‘i make bed’.

‘you’ll help me later, right?’ = ‘you help me later, yes?’ (for this one, in russian, the same phrasal construct ends with the word ‘yes’ instead of the word ‘right’)

‘can you give me a tissue?’ = can you give me tissue?’

‘where’s the pen? do you have it?’ = ‘where is pen? you have?’

if you pay attention, you’ll notice that a lot of these patterns also occur in ilya’s speech, especially earlier on. that’s why i’m particularly impressed with the writing of his dialogue — it doesn’t come across as stereotyping/caricatural because the way he speaks english is consistent with russian linguistic/grammatical rules. this is often how russian-speaking people speak english when it is their second language and they’re still learning.

you still want?

i still want

i wish i knew you before it felt like a sin

you and me (but mostly me)

shane hollander i love you so much!!! 🥺

I feel inspired..