Genius, or Insanity?

ilya rozanov appreciation week: day two favorite look: black on black

Heated Rivalry (2025-) dir. Jacob Tierney

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Shane is the #1 person Ilya gossips with. Since Shane isn’t the best on picking up subtext, all of the drama Ilya has to share is a complete surprise to him. Which makes him both the most entertained by the gossip and the most entertaining gossip partner.

Shane has an extremely dry sense of humor, and in public he’ll whisper deadpan commentary into Ilya’s ear while Ilya tries not to cry laughing.

Ilya has a very dark sense of humor that makes most people who hear it uncomfortable, but not Shane. Shane thinks it’s absolutely hilarious every time.

Ilya and Shane love to sit in the same room, do separate activities, and barely speak to each other. Shane will read a book while Ilya plays a video game, and one of them will have their feet in the other’s lap.

While everyone in the league thinks Ilya is a huge asshole, Shane thinks he’s hilarious. In fact, Shane usually agrees with Ilya’s chirps and will not defend anyone against them.

Shane and Ilya are obviously hunkering down at the cottage together. There's no hockey, but they don't know for how long, so they're still training all the time. They're doing interviews and having to make it look like they're in completely different places. Ilya has to keep being reminded that he's supposed to still be back in Ottawa.

Ilya's teammates keep asking if they can be in a lockdown bubble together and he's gotta be like "No, can't do that. I'm not taking any chances." But now they're worried because he hasn't seen or been around another human being in months and they've noticed that even before lockdown he made more jokes about killing himself than the average person, so they're stressed to their eyeballs about his mental health.

Meanwhile Ilya's living the kind of domestic fantasy with his man that he didn't think they were going to get until retirement. For the first time ever most days he can truly pretend that he and Shane are the only people in the world. Sometimes David and Yuna come over for dinner because they are also isolating at their cottage. But most of the time it's just endless hours of just the two of them and neither of them could be happier. Their biggest decision every day is when and where to fuck. Some people are getting into sourdough – Shane and Ilya have committed to learning one new sexual position every day.

#okay but them coming out to Ilya's team because like his team is concerned and maybe Shane and Ilya go back to Ilya’s ottawa house to get a#grocery delivery that they can't get out at the cottage and the doorbell rings and Shane goes to get it and its bood and hayes standing 6#feet from the door with like a care package for ilya and they're like “ilya said he was isolating alone” and shane is there in boxers and a#raiders 81 sweater like “....um....”

Ilya appears behind him, also in boxers and Shane's Canada fleece, and he looks over to where Bood and Hayes' jaws are practically on the floor, and flashes them an apologetic smile. But internally he's also like fuck, fuck, fuck, Shane doesn't want to come out or be out yet fuck they've fucked it. So he starts like, "So however weird your lockdown stories are, it can't be as weird as ours."

And Shane puts a hand on his arm to stop him, and is like "You can tell them the truth about us, baby, it's okay."

Women wanted to be lawyers and engineers and chemists. They wanted to use their brains in challenging and interesting ways. They wanted to get the satisfaction from solving problems and inventing new shit and getting attention for it.

This turned up in my ask box recently. I've masked the sender's identity.

Sometimes when I chat with an AI, I think of HIGH WIZARDRY and wonder if we as a species - for the first time - are at the dawn of another Earthbound species gaining consciousness, and like Dairine, whether we're being proper guardians. This isn't a calcified belief but just a random idea that flickered to mind. Wondering - as the writer who thought it up decades ago - what you think, if anything.

I think what I described in HW is absolutely nothing like we're currently seeing unfold on this planet. What's being poorly constructed here—while we watch from day to day—is a mechanism hurriedly and incompetently trained by other human beings to operate on top of a platform constructed of greed and theft. There are no new beings or intelligences being born here. If there were, they would be quickly declared to be "owned" by these billionaires, and hence their slaves. Meanwhile, the platforms' owners have already made it plain that once they control its source completely enough, they intend to sell intelligence to you, metered. ...If you can afford it. If you can't? Wow, sucks being you.

...Nor should I have to point you to cites for this. They're out there in plain English. Even Google, poor denatured creature that it is now, can find them. But there's still hope these people's intentions will never come to pass, due to their own overarching greed.

Meanwhile: "chat mode" interaction with this soulless, cash-grasping, unguardrailed machinery will do you no good. People have already died of it. I don't want anybody to do so on my watch, unwarned. So please stop.

It is not thinking. It is not comprehending.

It is spitting out the reply that, according to its data, looks the most like it would be a reply.

It does not understand the meaning of things it says. It just knows the statistically likely arrangement of those words, given the words said so far.

"It’s finished, it’s done. You can’t take loved away.”

- Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth