one thing you need to know about 2014. is that what does the fox say was playing pretty much everywhere you went. and everybody was just relieved it wasn't blurred lines
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first post for context / see the tag 'open relationship au' for more snippets or the masterlist so kindly put together by @tafkarfanfic.
June 2015
It's been a day since Shane sent that message to Brian. A little over two hours since Brian's plane landed. Ten minutes since he texted Shane, telling him he was almost there.
Six seconds since he knocked on the door.
Shane is so anxious he feels numb as he reaches for the handle. He's practiced what to say but he has no idea what to expect from Brian, no way to really mentally prepare.
He's knocked off course immediately as he sees Brian.
His face is bruised, an angry dark purple stretched across his cheek. It's such an incongruous sight - Shane can't remember the last time he saw an injury like that on someone other than a hockey player - that it takes him a moment to figure out what he's even looking at.
"What happened?"
"Can I come in?" Brian asks instead of answering.
Shane steps aside, head still reeling. Once Brian is inside, leaning against the kitchen counter, he asks again, "What happened?"
"I, uh, kinda got into it with this drunk homophobe," Brian says, smiling wryly. "I wouldn't have engaged but I was kinda drunk too, so. I'm just lucky my friends were there and he was alone because it could've ended really badly."
Cold fear pools in Shane's stomach at the thought. He knows the kind of violence gay people face, has seen what even perceived queerness gets met with in locker rooms across every level, but this feels different, the stark, ugly reality of it staring at him in the face.
"That's awful," he says. "Are you okay?"
Brian shrugs one shoulder. "I'm fine. It probably looks worse than it feels. Anyway, it's not why I'm here."
"Oh." Shane shifts on his feet. "Right. Uh..."
"I really fucked up, coming to Vegas."
Shane blinks. Brian is looking at him, brows drawn, and Shane doesn't know what to do with the contriteness he sees on his face. This isn't how he expected this conversation to go, and it hasn't even really started yet.
"It was so inconsiderate of me," Brian continues. "I just knew that I really wanted to be there, even if we couldn't see each other. I didn't think about how much it would stress you out, and I should have because I know what's at stake for you."
"That's, uh - " Shane doesn't know what to say. Even if we couldn't see each other. Would Brian really have been fine with that, if Shane had just asked instead of making an argument out of it right away? "I guess I overreacted a little."
"Babe, no. You were right, I shouldn't have been there." Brian laughs, running a hand through his hair. "Truthfully, I feel like I've been going a little crazy over you lately."
"...You have?"
"I've been really jealous," Brian admits. "I think... maybe opening the relationship was a bad idea."
Shane has no idea how they got here. He feels ten steps behind, his planned speech up in smokes. These are all things he never in a million years would have thought he'd hear Brian say.
"It seemed to make sense at the time. But now," Brian waves a dismissive hand, "I feel like an idiot for suggesting it in the first place. For not closing it again when you asked for it, last May."
Shane doesn't remember asking for that. He remembers telling Brian that not seeing Ilya anymore would amount to the same thing on his side, but that hadn't been the point. He'd wanted to be able to keep seeing Ilya because he liked him - not that he'd realized this about himself at the time.
Right. He needs to get this conversation back on track.
"It wasn't a great idea," he agrees. "But it happened and it - it changed things for me."
Something sharpens in Brian's gaze and Shane looks away, feeling oddly ashamed.
"This is about Rozanov," Brian says. It isn't a question.
Shane nods at the floor. "I, uh. I like him. He likes me, too."
"And now you want to leave me for him."
It sounds so unbelievably cruel, phrased like that. Shane can't bring himself to look up and he startles when Brian's hand cups his cheek, nudging his chin up.
"And then what?" Brian asks, voice gentle. "It would be a hundred times more complicated being with him, wouldn't it? You don't even live in the same country. And what happens when he loses interest?"
Shane's stomach twists at that. It feels wrong, to think of Ilya as being so fickle, but it's been nagging at him all the same.
Brian's thumb brushes softly across his cheek. "This is my fault. I know I haven't been a good boyfriend lately, but I can make it up to you. I just need the chance."
It's so difficult, remembering how awful Brian made him feel before when right now, he's being so gentle. Saying all the right things, actually admitting to fault in a way Shane has never heard him do before.
"I love you so much, Shane. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you."
Shane swallows. He can't even say it back, the words getting caught in his throat as he thinks them. They wouldn't be true; he doesn't love Brian anymore. When did that happen?
"I - I don't-"
"One chance," Brian pleads. He kisses Shane and Shane lets him. "This is just a stumbling block, I promise. We can go back to how we were."
Shane isn't sure he can believe that. He doesn't even know that he wants it to be true. But denying Brian the chance to even try feels wrong. Like quitting mid-game.
started rewatching ted lasso s1 today and man it's still funny to me that this saccharine heartwarming show has 3 topics it includes in almost every storyline and they are a) divorce b) daddy issues and c) severe mental health crises. like the contrast between the sweet inspirational tone and the incredibly harsh personal circumstances literally every character is dealing with is hysterical. or at least it is when i've been awake for almost 24 hours straight and am watching the show on my phone on a plane lmao
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i hate traveling idgaf about the existential implications of transporter technology if it means i don’t have to deal with airports and airplanes i’m hopping in the kills-you-and-creates-a-perfect-copy-elsewhere machine every time
you may be familiar with disney twisted wonderland, the gacha game in which various disney villains are used as direct inspiration for handsome anime boys. well that game was so successful that disney is trying to do it again but this time they're just animeboyifying whatever
here's mickey, goofy, donald, and chip & dale. yeah they turned mickey & friends into anime boys. they're an idol unit or something. they're technically not anime boy versions of the source characters, they have different names. mickey's guy is "Neo Michel". not michael, michel, like he's french. chip & dale are "Ruska Moncrief" and "Ranka Monk", they have different last names, they're not brothers anymore so that they can be yaoibait instead, anyways this post isn't actually about these guys I'm just setting the stage for the actual humanizations I wanted to show you
They also did monsters inc. And. Well it's obvious from the designs who mike and sully are. but you will also notice. the blonde one on the left. with glasses. monsters inc is kind of famously about just the two guys so they didn't really have a lot of other non-villain characters to take anime boys inspiration from, I guess, so, well,
Yeah it's her. they made an anime boy version of the mean receptionist slug. her name is roz btw, as all of boygachagame twitter has become extremely aware of in the past 3 days as we speculated prior to the release of the full image who tf the third guy was. the anime boy's name is "noah slugger". at this point no parody of the types of things gacha games will make gijinkas of will ever be able to live up to what disney is officially spending their own real money on designing
thinking once again about the enormity of this moment on the beach in florida. what room are you in? a call back to their first hookup, their first arrangement, when ilya asked shane this question in the locker room. what room are you in? which really meant: will you let me in? will you give yourself to me?
and now, after everything, this exchange of information suddenly weighs more, feels charged, feels dangerous in a different way. and it's shane asking this time. what room are you in? which really means: will you let me in? will you give yourself to me? enormous, electric moment. look at how it shows on their faces
“What are you waiting for” there has to be a perfect moment where the door is open and my real life is on the other side waiting for me and if I wait long enough for just the right moment then maybe just maybe no one will hate me for going through that door. Maybe they’d even understand why had to do what I did to get there.
something i don't see talked about a lot but always makes me emotional on re-reads of tlg is the fact that even after shane is unwillingly outed to the world, and as a direct result:
unjustly suspended from his job
condemned by one of his best friends
condemned by his teammates
dissected by the media
threatened by the commissioner
accused of cheating at the sport he has dedicated his whole life to; and
raked over the coals for a true accident
he STILL goes to watch ilya play
without question or concern, he sits in the audience to watch ilya in round 2 alongside the team that just kicked him out of the playoffs and caused tripgate
he spends tlg in debilitating fear over the possibility of someone figuring them out and goes to such extreme lengths to keep that from happening that he doesn't even have a photograph to show for an 11-year relationship
but still, ilya mentions he can get tickets for shane and his parents to come see him play and shane doesn't spend a second worrying it may fuel rumours, bring unwanted attention to his relationship, put him in a generally uncomfortable position - he actually brightens at the suggestion and then happily sits in the audience to cheer ilya on 😭
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The use of screens and technology in heated rivalry is genuinely so interesting because they represent such different things for each character. For Ilya, they are a sort of escape, a window into what he wants but feels he can’t have and in this way, also a reminder of and confrontation with what he lacks. He’s either shown sitting in a dark room, watching TV alone to further represent his loneliness (watching the NYE celebrations in ep 1, watching Shane do his post-game interview asking him what it’s like to be perfect, watching the cottage documentary) or surrounded by lots of people, being confronted with things he is not allowed to react to in the way he wants to, thereby separating him from those around him by having to stifle his emotions (when he’s being shown the rose & Shane news or watching the gossip segment on TV or even scrolling through comments about them, he’s always in public, surrounded by lots of people, mainly his teammates).
Shane is mostly shown looking at his phone, I think the only shot we get of him watching tv (besides when he’s watching hockey - though I’ll get into that) is when he’s waiting for Ilya before their first hook-up, when he’s nervous. Whereas for Ilya, screens are an escape or a confrontation, I’d postulate that to Shane, they don’t symbolize the same thing (he does turn the TV off, since the distraction is not working for him). They are just as ambivalent for Shane, though in a different way; for him, they act as a mirror. They represent both his most private desires and his curated public image. A good example of that is when we see him reading comments about himself and rose after yet another failed attempt at intimacy with her, checking that the public image is still intact even though he is failing at actually playing the part in private. The only other time I can recall him looking at his phone (when not texting, but watching something) is when he watches Ilya’s interview in episode 1, which of course represents the hidden desire. Something we see from Shane a lot as well is typing out things he doesn’t actually send thereby voicing his deepest desires/wishes/concerns - “we’re about to play a game against each other, are you trying to fuck with me”, “we didn’t even kiss”. Not only that, we see him re-reading his and Ilya’s old chat multiple times - both in Sochi (waiting for a reply to the “are u okay?” text) and after messaging Rose in the locker room, when he scrolls down to Lily’s chat just to look at their old messages.
Another significant moment is of course Shane watching Ilya win the cup surrounded by his teammates. Here, we have two of his deepest desires wrapped up into one playing out in front of him - excelling at hockey and Ilya. Still, he can’t lose himself in the moment, all too aware of having to uphold the image, surrounded by his teammates (a good contrast to this is Ilya watching Shane win the cup, alone in a dark room again, during the ep 4 montage. We see him the second time with friends, though he’s more obviously playful and admitting to his desires - “it should have been me” rather than trying to suppress them. At the same time, Shane is slightly more earnest in his moment, saying Ilya is the best player and actually meaning it).
This of course all culminates in the big Scott&Kip kiss moment, which Shane & Ilya also witness through a screen. That this is the moment setting both of them free, is evident when you look at the way technology was used until then and after then. Whereas Shane used it to hide his true self as well as try (and fail) to admit to his deepest desires, Shane now witnesses someone’s carefully curated image be shattered in favor of allowing himself to live without fear and follow his heart. Meanwhile though for Ilya, screens showcased his loneliness and confronted him with everything he thought he couldn’t have, this is the moment actually making his deepest wish possible, motivating him to actually follow his heart as well (“I’m coming to the cottage”).
In episode 6, with them spending so much time together, they’re rarely on their phones. We see them sitting on opposite ends of the couch staring at their phones in the “I could marry Svetlana scene” which is fitting, but other than that, they are mostly present and in the moment, which of course also leads to them being outed (“your phones on the table, it’s been ringing all morning”). Shane forgets about protecting his image and that is when it comes shattering to the ground pretty violently.
i do think Shane Hollander after the outing would finally cave to Rose begging him to listen to her good frienf taylor swift's album Reputation and he would rock with it. his beautiful ego would respond to it like nothing else.
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