Local Idiot

people always say that internet spaces are americanised because the users are majority americans.

and i do always wonder how much of that is "there are actually a majority of usamericans" and how much is "usamerican cultural markers are a default for many online spaces, and non usamericans are often indistinguishable from usamericans unless you're actively looking".

so here's an incredibly unscientific poll reblog for reach or whatever

ilya convinces shane to reenact and record some of the videos without his face to send back to cliff. it takes a bit of prodding at shanes exhibitionism and some jealousy of cliff when he finds out about their old threesome, maybe some feminisation like "he wont know you’re even a man, we will only record how well your ass takes me, he will think you are a pretty girl with a perfect ass", either way ilya convinces shane.

and they START with being indistinguishable if it’s a man or a woman but VERY slowly with shanes permission ilya starts showing more of shanes body, it goes from “indistinguishable from a man or a woman” to “that is a man if i think about it for a minute” but not identifiable as shane. they do this slow. incredibly slowly. beanie said it best, boiling a frog slow.

there are two purposes for this. One, ilya likes showing shane off, the close ups of their sex are fine and they’re hot but in ilyas option they dont do shane the justice he deserves. even his waist is obscene, to cut his body out of videos is like sacrilege. shane, the longer this goes on and the more comfortable he gets and the more ilya turns this into a sex thing, is not as scared of cliff knowing ilya is fucking a man as long as it cant be traced back to him. Two, ilya is making cliff microdose his bisexuality hes still in denial about by slowly exposing more and more of shanes body so its clear its a man. hes confident one of these days cliff will realize hes been jacking it to two dudes fucking and will finally make the connection ilya made the first day he met cliff.

this has some unique chirping material to it to explore between shane and ilya. shane getting slammed into the boards by cliff mid game and the next time hes within hearing range and alone ilya is spitting out some shit about how he wonders how cliff would play if he knew it was shane in those videos taking him so well. now they’re both half hard in their gear thinking about it. shane shoving ilya at the boards to get between him and the puck, commenting that he thinks cliff has enough material to fuck him better than ilya does at this point. shane is half hard in his gear, ilya is plotting to record again that night to prove he’ll always fuck shane better than cliff could.

and post outing? oh my god, post outing but pre cliff realizing/being told its shane in those videos shane is really really weird around cliff because shane is thinking “he knows now hes literally seen our sex tapes he knows what i look like getting fucked he has seen ilya fucking me” and cliff is thinking “my best friends boyfriend fucking hates me :(((“

once cliff realizes/is told he starts getting weird with ILYA while shane is STILL being weird with cliff and ilya sits through like 3 weeks of hell before he has to step in and break down the most problem avoidant people in his life to get them to admit this is about the sex tapes so they can solve the issue and once he knows what its about hes like “you fucking idiots are stressed about the SAME THING stop being weird we all jack off to them”

the whole time things are weird cliff has those videos in a locked folder and hes trying to decide if he should delete them or not. on one hand, hes sure it was never supposed to come out like this if it was meant to come out at all, on the other hand its like 20 to 30 videos and a solid 15 of them are hot as FUCK and were pretty regular videos he’d jack off to so if he deletes them he’ll be a little sad about it. he didnt watched them since he found out but once ilya talks to him and shane all bets are off and hes jackin it to them again💪💪

this can be hollanoveau or just exhibition or whatever your heart desires but the important part is that it is yours now, go my worms

this post is inspired in part by this one by @cheshirepirouette and sponsored in part by convos w @asteriis and @indouscurse here’s to y’all!! this post also goes out to my brothers, who are pale as hell for reasons unbeknownst to all of us (this is a joke).

like any good headcanon, this started as a joke because i thought to myself: Ryland sounds like the type of name that somebody’s Black child would have and only use on church sundays. nobody actually has ever called him that in his whole entire life, except maybe his mama SOMETIMES and that’s why he doesn’t remember it right away. i feel like every Black person knows somebody who is called literally anything except their god given name. people call him lil r, lil grace, gracie, ry, ryry, riri, RG, lando, mr. grace, dr. grace, but nobody calls him Ryland, which is part of why he Can’t Remember for so long.

so of course i went back to the source material to see if he ever actually mentioned being white anywhere and unfortunately it is very much at the beginning of the book. so THEN i started to think about how i could get around that while remaining at least largely canon compliant (as a little treat for myself). what i came up with is what i have affectionately dubbed my “litebrite baby” headcanon.

You and I are birds of a feather, it would seem. Black scientists who have been successful despite it all. men who are willing to put our fear and distrust of The System to the side to try to do what’s right. men who know how my story ends. i know what i am, Dr. Grace, you don’t have to shy away from it. do you know who you are? what you are?

and grace says “okay!! let’s bring it back to science, buddy!!”

and dubois says, “no.”

as mentioned in my last post abt him, i think grace in this AU is so. put off by dubois. in part bc the niche they fill is too similar. they cannot both survive in this environment, they can’t both be the Smart and Useful Black. but i think in part as well because dubois is always looking to him, looking at him.

The Centaurs are playing in New York and Shane doesn’t travel with the team because of some, like, very minor injury, don’t worry, he’s fine. Scott asks Ilya to get a drink afterwards, but not at the Kingfisher, somewhere else, no reason. He is absolutely miserable to be confiding in fucking Ilya Rozanov about this, but he eventually confesses that he and Kip are getting divorced. 

He says that after he came out, there was all this pressure to make sure the story had a happy ending. He was with Kip when he came out, of course they had to get married! Maybe he didn’t really think about what it meant to actually be married, though. Everything just happened really fast. And, like — Shane and Ilya got married right after they came out. Does Ilya ever feel like they rushed into things? Did he feel that pressure to get married to make the whole thing more palatable? 

(For our purposes we are in book canon, Scott and Kip went from getting together to coming out in like six months and Scott doesn’t really know how long Shane and Ilya have been together.)

And Ilya is like, “Cool story, but my relationship has traveled more roads and suffered more obstacles than you could ever possibly imagine. One time Shane had to google because he didn’t know that the word for what he was trying to describe was ‘microagression’ and then he had to get out his Russian dictionary, but there’s no Russian word for ‘microagression’ so he kind of invented one, and then we could finally finish our argument about whether the Voyageurs were being a shitty team and also we were doing all of this over FaceTime because I was in Ottawa and Shane was in Pittsburgh. Actually getting married was a footnote at the end of the 200 page dissertation of things that we did to make that relationship work.” Because obviously a central tenant of Shane and Ilya’s relationship is that they do kind of think their relationship is better than everyone else’s and I don’t know, maybe they make some valid points! 

I also like the idea of Ilya being utterly baffled, like, “I have literally only ever made romantic choices that I knew would make the rest of the world unhappy, you’re asking me if I felt pressured to get married? And you think I would care about that? Grandpa, I cannot relate.” 

My less generous interpretation is that heated rivalry is so compelling *because* the love story is made more electric with bdsm, but it’s intentionally made more commercially successful through plausible deniability to not alienate/scandalize a wider audience. Dog whistling if you will, while cloaking some of the more misunderstood aspects of kink in scenes like the Vegas bathroom / penthouse with a level of emotional turmoil that gives viewers a way to opt out of (and in some cases, blame) the bdsm of it all.

So there’s one reading of those scenes where Ilya & Shane are roleplaying to artificially mask their true desire to be more emotionally vulnerable with each other. Like playing dress up to make things less intimate / real. It’s hot but it’s keeping their hearts safe. Reid’s Vegas bonus/blog chapter makes reading this scene a bit blurry, and I find it fascinating that she decided to include it/release it after the book was published — did she feel pressure to clarify that Ilya was actually acting out of fear in those scenes? Did that justify his particular flavor of sadism in that moment? I think that’s where the plausible deniability comes in.

Because for people who appreciate the sadism in those scenes, the way Ilya is acting feels more intimate than not. He’s trying to understand Shane and himself and the ways in which they are sparking this hunger thats gnawing gnashing growling inside them; when Ilya makes Shane pout and cry and Ilya hears the quiver in his voice when Shane’s shouting back at him, it’s Ilya’s way of finding the crack in the shields they’ve both been using to keep themselves safe. His sadism is getting them closer, and Shane’s submission to it is accepting that, rewarding that sharpness from Ilya with a softness he shares back. It’s not a crutch to avoid emotional intimacy, it IS their intimacy.

But it’s also tangled up in the emotionally devastating reality of their circumstances, they can barely get to know each other because they’re separated by the homophobia & racism & the injustices of their career, countries, families, and their respective traumas navigating all of that. So they’re bonding through sex without enough of Everything Else — communication, hanging out, casual mutual enjoyment — to fully support each other as much as they each need, and they hurt each other in the process. This is true whether or not sadism is the main driver of the scene, as evidenced by Ilya’s botched tunamelt-his-heart scheme, so it’s a bit of a double standard to say that ilyas sadism is less intimate / mature / loving than his “softer” side. But by giving the Vegas scenes an unhappy ending (Ilya not knowing how to ask for less emotionally charged pillow talk from Shane, Shane not knowing how to ask Ilya for a sweet kiss goodbye), there is an escape hatch for anyone viewing who doesn’t enjoy / want to enjoy their D/s dynamics.

The plausible deniability extends to how ilyas sadism is portrayed throughout his narrative arc as well. His demeanor during Shane’s first time anal is portrayed as gentle and encouraging and then he ghosts Shane for six months and the next time they fuck he’s big bad wolf-ing it, and Shane thumps his head on the elevator door and deletes his we didn’t even kiss text. It’s Good Ilya vs Bad Ilya and the bad Ilya is also kinkier. And then towards the end of the story, the domming and sadism become less stereotypical, which is refreshing for viewers who are enjoying the breadth of that portrayal, but can be more easily ignored by anyone who doesn’t want it. Ilya forcing giving Shane a blowjob while he’s on the phone with Hayden is crackling with sadistic electricity, but there’s giggling and the sun is pouring through the windows and they’re at the cottage they’re endgame they’re about to tell each other I Love You and anyone who isn’t looking for bdsm there doesn’t have to see it.

— youre right, it’s not a neutral act to ignore the kink. I guess what I was getting at is that it DOES feel anti-kink to ignore it and also the entity doing much of the work towards that action feels like the source material itself.

Like don’t get me wrong I love how the book and tv series are both very show-not-tell about the kink but ALSO the story is narratively putting scenes in an order that make it feel like there’s an emotional arc from bad kinky sad sex (vegas) to good nonkinky happy sex (the cottage). Vegas bathroom is my favorite scene of the show followed by Vegas penthouse but im in the minority in large part because it ends on a sour note. And the cottage has my third favorite scene with the phone call blow job. So to ME the arc does not feel like it goes from bad kinky sex to good nonkinky sex but again I think I’m in the minority with that read. At least what I’ve seen with mainstream interpretations of how the overall cottage vibes feel to most folks.

which is that so much of the For Those Who Have Eyes To See reading of this as a D/s love story, and most of why i am like, so genuinely emotionally invested in it is that the journey is not from more kink to less kink. it's a journey from less emotional connectedness to more emotional connectedness, as seen through the lens of crazy hot sex. it's not that there's less D/s as things progress between them, any more than there's less sex! but the D/s becomes emotional rather than exclusively sexual. it's no longer just "i'm gonna order you to beg to be touched in this bathroom," it's also "i'm going to pet you while you crouch at my feet." which is like, crazy! never seen before onscreen kink content! and for those of us who are knowledgeable about and perhaps personally invested in dominance and submission as a lifestyle and a cornerstone of relationships, the second thing is actually arguably kinkier because it's not sexual, because it explicitly shows that dominance and submission are simply part of how they relate to and love each other (everything is hollanov TPE)

but the average person i think has literally no idea that D/s even can be non-sexual and has never thought of waht it could potentially mean to people on an emotional level for someone to dominate and someone to submit. and so as the sex becomes warmer and the whole relationship including and maybe especially the kink becomes as much romantic as it is sexual, it's harder and harder to see it. and people are viscerally uncomfortable with power exchange, so they don't want to see it, and the show makes (and possibly has to make, given the constraints of the media ecosystem) room for a reading of their love story as this hayes-code-esque "and then they fell in love so they had normal sex forever instead of weird kinky sex, which is something only people who don't care about each other would do" as opposed to what i see, which is "and then they fell in love, in large part because ilya's dominance and shane's submission ultimately lead them to feel emotionally comfortable with and deeply connected to one another, and just like everything else about their relationship it no longer has to be sexual for them to allow themselves to have each other"

When they think of doms, for example, they think of Christian Grey and his literary clones. Or the faceless stone tops that many characters get reduced to in the most shameless AO3 porn (not that there's anything wrong with that). They don't necessarily realize that the cold, brooding, humorless, borderline or actual rapist characterization is part of the BDSM fantasy and not a realistic portrayal.

So when they see Ilya Rozanov - who is warm and funny, attentive and loving, with a complicated emotional life, they can't match it up with their idea of what a dom is.

Outside of erotica, the closest most folks come to BDSM is in police procedurals. In those cases, they're usually victims and suspects, and they're always at the most visually extreme end of the experience so the straight-laced detectives can react to it. So you'll get a lot of bondage gear and latex suits and dominatrices with whips and so on.

There's nothing wrong with any of that, of course, but it means that when these folks see Shane and Ilya, and their lack of bondage gear or whips or anything like that and they think "oh no, they're totally vanilla." (Logistically speaking, these are characters who get to meet up four times a year. They're not going to waste time on complicated bondage set ups. And anything like whips or toys would be something they'd have to pack which risks discovery in many ways

They don't pick up on "more", or Ilya's penchant for gripping the back of Shane's neck to ground him - which he does even at the dinner table with Shane's PARENTS. Or Ilya spitting in Shane's hand. Or the slamming into the sofa during the montage. They do generally pick up on Vegas, but they look at it like a one-time thing and then equate the unhappy reactions afterward to the "strange" sex as opposed to the lack of aftercare.

the dark knight trilogy

gladiator

slap shot, a 1977 hockey comedy starring Paul Newman which shane felt super normal about

Iron Man 1

Thor 1 and 2 but not 3 :/

movies shane has rated 1 star

miracle. why does the coach keep bringing up afghanistan. also everyone on this team is so fucking annoying

avengers endgame. i feel like he would feel very betrayed by the ending

challengers. self explanatory. he thinks art and pat are whiny and insufferable