Hug now, escape later

I am back because I need more of the gay hockey show gifs in my life.

The tips are on ao3 now, and I’m Res but on tumblr.

Now, Shane is an Optimiser. I firmly believe he was an early adopter of modular luggage with nifty little cubes. He has his clothes all Modular Storaged in a way that could be described as “peak Marie Kondo”, but he has not actually paid attention to Marie Kondo and when the TV series comes out in 2019 he’s pretty sure people are only asking him about her because of the Japanese thing. (He does think an “organising consultant” is something plenty of hockey players could stand to employ. Not him, though. He already has his Systems)

Ilya on the other hand: Ilya is the guy who has both walked away from everything (several times) and had things ripped from him. So he doesn’t just have a chaotic attachment pattern with PEOPLE, he’s got a wildly fluctuating relationship with Stuff and Institutions.

I’m pretty sure I knew about Marie Kondo before 2019. I was using shoeboxes to “Kondo” my clothes in my shitbox apartment in Geneva where I had shelving but no drawers. I don’t remember _how_ I learned about Marie Kondo (maybe @unfuckyourhabitat actually) and I don’t know if I knew what she looked like or what an oddly specific kind of person she presents as (feminine and upbeat! Warm but with a culturally specific kind of understatement and control - at no point did it ever seem like she was trying to perform _behold, the real me_ - except for moments like “I love mess!” which coming from anyone else would read as Putting A Customer Face On but no she definitely does love mess!)

Anyway I’d need to dive deep into the Kondo Pop Culture Trajectory and/or my own tumblr archive to put a date on it, but I posit:

Ilya fucking LOVES Marie Kondo. He loves/craves boring as much as Kondo loves mess, so Organising Content is kinda catnip to him.

Possibilities I’m considering:

- Ilya ditching stuff leaving Boston, AND bringing things he knows he doesn’t necessarily need but can’t part with, but it’s easier to PAY TO SOLVE THIS than work through it. Ilya thinking _this ought to be a Kondo situation. Marie Kondo would have advice here._ Then, Ilya making some kind of press statement or doing a media spot or even at his first game back in Boston as a Centaur: extremely Hockey Standard “always grateful to Boston, it was time to move on, looking forward to new things” talk and he has so many FEELINGS. Like. He’s not actually looking forward to this Cens season (one might infer that the pre-Wiebe coach is either not good or not a good vibe, and even if he was good in both counts it feels different going into a rebuild at the Top Of Your Game compared to as the number 1 draft pick - all number 1 draft picks go to dogshit teams). He can’t tell anyone he moved For Love. He can’t even say “personal reasons” and have everyone assume he’s moving to be closer to family, because no one knows he has (prospective? As long as Shane loves him?) family in Ottawa.

AND he’s genuinely sad about leaving Boston the city, and Boston the team. (He has feelings about leaving specific people - mainly Svetlana and Cliff - but this is a more diffuse regret.) He says the standard platitudes but as he says them, the weird Japanese Organising Woman surfaces in his mind saying something about thanking, like, clothes or something, for what they did for you, when you have to throw them out.

Suddenly his Hockey Platitudes about thanking Boston feel real.

(Maybe he tries to talk to Shane and gets a rant about everything Shane and Yuna both hate about the Kondo Phenomenon)

- Ilya watching Tidying Up With Marie Kondo on the road, which isn’t that weird (Book canon has Hayden watching weird heterosexual dating reality shows, and logically reality tv is easy to dip in and out of). But Ilya gets a bit weird about it. Some days he just delights in watching that weird Organising Nerd delight in Organising Things. Some days he watches the People Who Have Mess thank and farewell their mess that Isn’t Bringing Joy and he doesn’t cry. He doesn’t.

BUT ALSO and definitely after the TV series is out

- Shane’s Dildo (the Original One): suppose it is not the size/shape he currently prefers but Shane HAS hung onto it, particularly because… how do you dispose of a silicone dildo? Do you just send it to landfill? What if his cleaners spot it in the trash? And under that there _is_ an attachment to the Object Itself. Shane bought it himself. Shane learned things about himself with it. Ilya might have been a catalyst but that dildo is proof that Shane both wanted and CHOSE to pursue… well. Definitely “getting fucked”. Maybe “being interested in men” full stop.

I don’t think Shane and Ilya have a full and coherent conversation about this at the time but I DO picture

a) Ilya figuring out how to dispose of a used dildo in a Shane Anxiety Complaint way (as far as I know environmentally speaking it’s a lost cause).

and

b) improvising some kind of Ceremony Of Thanking The Object For What You Learned From It.

Shane is like This Is Stupid but he entertains improbable and ridiculous things from Ilya all the time… and he actually does feel some kind of closure.

Maybe it’s actually sexy. Ilya fucks Shane one last time with the dildo Shane has graduated out of, and talks to the DILDO the whole time, thanking it for its service.

and

c) Shane not at all recognising the inter-text because Ilya is a) endearingly earnest and b) translating his big feelings into Standard Jock + Talking About Sex With Shane or c) straight up filthy.

CHAOS OPTION:

- A Kondo informed Ilya, who is a FIRST gen immigrant, initiates a conversation with Yuna about Shinto practices based on what he has learned from Kondo. This could go in all kinds of directions! Some of them are funny some are sad. One COULD envision a Bad version but I’m aiming for the funny-sad axis.

Even at a show only level: show!Ilya cued Shane to pull off well before he came, their first time, but actively resisted Shane’s efforts to communicate that he should do the same.

On first watch through, with no book context, that said to me that either Ilya LOVES that or he has some complex 5-D chess relationship with sucking dick to completion (or, less likely, he has my specific sensory relationship with the art of fellatio, wherein I’m not deep throating but I actively prefer that the spunk be as far back as feasible, because it’s less _weird slimy_ that way).

The best ones have advice on decor, how to select high-quality furniture, childrearing, fashion, etc--from a contemporary perspective, and the things the authors feel the need to clarify vs the wild shit that will just casually mention like it's something everyone knows and agrees on is REALLY revealing of the culture and how it's shifted.

And while a lot of the advice is WILDLY bigoted or just outright funny, you'd be surprised how much of it is...just genuinely timeless, and shockingly compassionate.

They ALSO, as a writer, have INVALUABLE resources--because, again, they're talking about things that are so MUNDANE that a lot of the time nobody really sat down to formally document what normal, everyday people thought or cared about--because that's boring! But a book written to provide advice and information to, say, a young woman who's never run her own home before? You can fully expect an entire chapter dedicated to The Types Of Oven, and which features are useful and worth spending money on, and which features are a huge hassle to clean and a waste of space, and what to spend that money on instead.

And like. As a writer who frequently works in the 1800s? Fuck inflation calculators, this is the kind of thing I need. This is absolutely priceless.

Now that being said.

My current favorite 'etiquette guide' in the world is actually like....70% purely practical advice, written by a gentleman the groupchat has affectionately dubbed History's Most Autistic Man In The World, and thank god they didn't have Aderall back then

Because the AuDHD is strong in this one and as a result, in addition to the deeply practical and useful everyday reference points, we also have:

Unfortunately for Mr Prime Minister Piss, this name change came back to haunt him after he was denied a passport a few years later due to the name. This led to this quite incredible entry into Australia's case law that is still frequently cited today:

Unfortunately for Pisso, the court ruled that the government was right to deny him a passport, on the grounds that the phrase "Prime Minister" might be considered by some to be offensive.

And this quote from Time magazine:

So we looked it up and yes, it was indeed the 'Dane' recording studio owner who attempted to stage a fascist uprising in Melbourne (of all places) in the 90s.

This was the last update we could find on him in the news, sounds like he's doing well for himself: