heated rivalry the book is like oh the major obstacle to this romance is that they can't be together in public <3. heated rivalry the show is like oh the major obstacle to this romance is toxic hypermasculinity and male loneliness and the devastating downstream effects of unacknowledged, unresolved trauma and verbal abuse on boys who are expected not to feel

ilya rozanov: i prefer to have sex with people i like and trust. this is because i am LAZY. it has nothing at all to do with the fact that i have been emotionally abused, neglected, and/or abandoned by my family, the people who were supposed to love me. i am not starved for affection!! NYET. i am just a fundamentally lazy person. never mind that i am a world-class professional athlete—one of the best players in the NHL—an accomplishment regularly achieved by indolent sloths.

Shane Hollander is such an awesome fucking character. I forgot what it’s like when you have a character that’s just sooo fun to play dolls with. What if you had a guy who’s deeply closeted and made up a billion rules for himself and compartmentalized every aspect of his personality and tried to be everything and everyone others expect him to be and hides his real self away even from himself but also doesn’t want to seem like he’s hiding so he’s always doing some insane tightrope balancing between being the most neurotic man on earth and trying to seem Chill. And then there’s a second guy who’s just like god I’m obsessed with whatever’s wrong with him. Fucking rules

shane putting on his dorky little glasses and reading his military biographies or whatever in bed while ilya is busy like, doing body shots and snorting lines of cocaine off hot women in the club. jacob tierney was like it's soooooo important for you to understand that this is a slut 4 dweeb pairing. it's so vital

Yuna and David having watched their autistic son be so isolated all of his adult life and never having a happy relationship or close friends who understand his anxiety and then finding out that the man they’ve spent a decade hating on his behalf can casually talk him down from a panic attack in less than a minute