OneOfTheEmilies

Anyway, I'm just imagining Ilya with this meticulous presentation, codesigned with his mother-in-law the executive manager of his charity Yuna Hollander.

And once Shane IS at team events (between the outing and officially joining the Cens), Ilya lets them know WHY this is a big thing for him...

So the first Cens event Shane attends, he bears witness to an all-out ARGUMENT between like five of his future teammates over whether the cake has any airborne allergens that means it needs putting in the specially designated 'SHANE DO NOT GO HERE' area, or if it's just a problem if Shane ingests it...

Crucially, this argument started BEFORE he and Ilya arrived. Just the Cens standing there having this argument as Shane and Ilya walk into the room, overtaken by every emotion all at once that their team are being THIS accommodating before even OFFICIALLY meeting Shane.

i see this and raise you that ilya didn't actually tell them it was for shane specifically. they know that allergies are apparently Very Important to ilya so yeah, sure, buddy. maybe this is important to him in his family or something. whatever. doesn't matter. sure the peanut butter cookies can remain in a sealed container away from everything else. why not.

which means that shane arrives to this event to find five grown men arguing about whether this cake is A Bad Cake and needs to go to jail or not, and shane fully thinks he's having a stroke for a second. he knows all of those words but NOT in that order. and he's like ?? um?? and the guys fucking GRAB HIM and are like, "you are married to roz. you would know. he would want this cake to go in jail, right? it has hazelnuts in it." and shane is just "i don't even know what you're asking me." and gets the explanation that team events have sections for food and the main one is no common allergens and then there's "hey, if you're allergic, stay tf away" in another area, and it's just a team bit to call it jail now. so if someone forgets and is like, "this has lemon in it," they can get a verdict on jail or not jail.

and shane is?? oddly touched??? yeah, send the cake to jail for sure. :)

But the thing is, people DO throw themselves at Shane left and right, he just doesn’t realize it.

The Voyagers are at a club and girls are eyeing him like the last steak in a tiger enclosure, but Hayden is about to bang his head on the table because Shane is in his usual Captain mode and paying zero attention to the girls. A few of the bolder ones approach him but he’s like “Hi, can I help you?” and “oh sorry, I’m on duty right now, I can’t leave my team” and Hayden gives up, he just can’t anymore. Jackie will need to step up and find this man a girl cuz Shane ain’t gonna do it on his own.

At brunch with Rose, the waiter is checking him out hardcore and smiling flirtatiously. Rose teases him about it, and Shane is like “???? He’s just doing his job? Isn’t it his job to be friendly?”

Years later, Hayden and Rose are trading war stories of Shane being oblivious to human attraction and Ilya’s just like, *shrug* you just need to be clear and direct with him, and Rose and Hayden both stare at him like “what do you mean?”

There are real labor problems here. Base pay is often insulting. Customer tips carry too much of the burden. Workers need better protections, more transparent algorithms, protection from arbitrary deactivation, and actual recourse when the app or a customer screws them over. Car-dependent delivery is also an environmental and infrastructural problem, though in a denser city I’d still be doing this work; I’d just be doing it by bike.

But when people talk about delivery work, I rarely see them talk to actual delivery workers. I see a lot of abstract arguments about convenience, consumer decadence, “hustle culture,” and internalized neoliberalism. Meanwhile, when I’m out working and waiting in restaurants for orders, the other Dashers I meet are usually people who only speak Spanish, people who read as neurodivergent, visibly physically disabled people, or some combination of the above.

I have not met this mythical Disco Elysium poor ultraliberal hustlegrinder-wannabe people seem to be arguing with. Maybe that archetype exists somewhere. If it exists among any kind of gig worker, it would probably be rideshare drivers. But most of what I see looks less like “rise and grind” and more like “this is one of the few forms of work available to people who need flexibility, low barriers to entry, limited managerial surveillance, or a way to work around language barriers, disability, burnout, chronic illnesses and injuries with symptoms that come and go unpredictably, caregiving, résumé gaps, or discrimination.”

That does not make the current system good. It means the current system is filling a real gap that a lot of supposedly better systems do not even acknowledge.

As a disabled person who is burnout-prone and demand-sensitive, contracting as a delivery driver has given me an unprecedented level of financial flexibility. I can work when I have capacity. I can stop when I’m deteriorating. I can build my day around my actual body instead of being trapped under a manager who thinks “reliable” means “able to perform the same way every day no matter what.” That matters. It does not cancel out the exploitation, but it is also not fake just because it is politically inconvenient.

And delivery itself is not some inherently decadent evil. Sometimes people live alone. Sometimes they are sick. Sometimes they are disabled, exhausted, overwhelmed, grieving, overloaded, or recovering from something else - perhaps the stress and fatigue induced by their own job. Sometimes they need medicine, groceries, or a meal that will actually unplug their sinuses instead of whatever generic community-care slop someone thinks they should be grateful for. Humans are allowed to need specificity. “Food” is not the same as “the food I can actually eat right now.”

A serious labor critique would ask how to make delivery work safer, better-paid, less tip-dependent, less car-dependent, less algorithmically punitive, and less precarious. It would ask what kinds of flexible, accessible work should exist for people who cannot thrive in conventional employment. It would ask how cities could support bike delivery, worker cooperatives, public infrastructure, and real protections without simply replacing one bad system with a moral sermon about how nobody should ever want takeout.

But a lot of the discourse does not do that. It treats convenience itself as suspicious. It treats wanting flexible work as false consciousness. It treats the needs of disabled people, immigrants, and other people who can't fit into traditional employment structures as details to be swept aside in favor of a cleaner political image.

Captions cover the spot on the screen you put the information I need

The dialogue is captioned but not the song you have playing that the dialogue is responding to

You only captioned the person on the screen, not the person off screen who is also talking

No captioning of critical sound effects (alarms, bells, dogs barking, etc)

Speakers are not labelled at moments where it is not clear on the screen who is talking.

Captions cover the spot on the screen that you put the information I need!

Other d/Deaf people welcome to add.

I think what’s delicious about Ilya is his self worth related to these concepts. He thinks he’s lazy, messy, undisciplined. You listen, you don’t soeak. Yes. You need a haircut. Yes, Father. The problem is leadership. Yes, nod, yes. But repeatedly we are shown that Ilya is good. He’s an attentive lover, he’s a good friend. He tries to be a good son to a hard man. He gives his brother whatever he asks for. He inspires his teammates. He worries that Ryan Price’s book will fall on the floor and oh fuck Price is going to lose his place, I will help, oh fuck, I failed.

But his family tells him he’s no good, so it must be true. They have been the loudest voices in his life and that’s literally become his inner monologue. But then here comes Shane “I don’t know that side of you at all” Hollander and soon enough Ilya is monologuing into the phone on the street outside of his father’s funeral about how actually no. He’s given everything to his family. He makes everything perfect. And he couldn’t physically be there for his father all the time but he paid for it all. And yet they despise him. He knows why, or says he does. But I don’t think does, I think in that moment the seed is planted that Ilya is lovable. And he doesn’t have to be perfect, he doesn’t have to drain himself dry. The person who loves him is trying to fill his cup from thousands of miles away.

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

Then it’s like: is it internalized homophobia and he just doesn’t like being around other gays? Not really. He doesn’t feel judgmental necessarily about the other people? But he definitely doesn’t Get It. If anything he kind of wishes that he was able to understand what about all of it brings them joy because they look so happy but it all makes him anxious to his fucking core. It makes him feel like he did at high school parties, completely off-beat and unable to follow what the social cues are.

Then Harris throws a pride bbq at his and Troy’s place and Shane is squirmy again, zoning in and out of a conversation that “they’re” in but really it’s just Ilya talking and Shane humming occasionally. Until Ilya nudges him away from the conversation and says “The lesbians are playing corn hole over there, why don’t you go try that?”

Shane wanders over, and somehow very quickly finds himself paired up with a woman wearing a backwards Centaurs cap and a pair of khaki shorts Shane swears he also owns. He blurts that thought out and across the grass another woman in Chacos and a Hawaiian shirt (he later finds out this is her wife) cups her hands around her mouth and yells “GAYYY” in a booming voice nearly identical to how he’s heard it in locker rooms for years. Except for once the boisterous hollering isn’t shoving Shane further into an invisible box, it’s inviting him into the joke. “I think my husband owns that shirt!” He shouts back and he gets a very familiar clap on the shoulder. It’s extremely jock-y and warm and approving.

We don’t talk about this enough. With all the big romantic gestures in The Long Game, this, to me, is one of the most romantic moments.

We know Ilya isn’t a fan of Shane’s restrictive diet. He teases him about it, but Ilya is an expert ragebaiter who knows how to tease the people he cares about when they feel safe and in ways that never really hurt.

Shane is “frantic” in this scene. Ilya has the perfect opening to say something about his diet, and he doesn’t take it. He sees that Shane is panicking, steps in and fixes it. He was looking at that menu thinking about Shane and Shane’s fuckass diet that Ilya doesn’t even like. But he knows this is important to Shane. He knows Shane is already nervous about being on a date with Ilya in public and being with another queer couple. So he meets Shane’s needs without Shane ever having to ask, and he does it quietly, without drawing any attention, so that Shane can save face.

Of course he’s gonna tease him about it a little bit later because that’s what they do. But he only does that AFTER Shane’s had a chance to catch his breath and feel safe again.

(referencing this post)

this is so cute and so funny and i am enjoying shane's embarrassment and despair at the hands of his concerned and loving family so much

david very helpfully volunteers that "the tilapia, uh.... cheated on you? since last time? they said they changed the recipe for the breading and now it has almonds."

shane puts his head in his hands like "maybe anaphylaxis would be better than this. i'm not even that hungry."

"shane! there's no need to be so dramatic," yuna says.

ilya, ever the helpful menace, has a suggestion. "lyubimyy, we ordered loving appetizers for the table to share. you and i could split a main dish as well? it will be like a threeso—"

shane stands up, tells the waitress "i am so sorry for the delay. i'll have the salmon salad without croutons," and goes to use the bathroom for A Moment Of Peace, Please God Above

having a waitress memorize his entire list of allergens and adopt the colloquialisms his family uses to refer to them feels like it goes a good deal beyond that, however. he can not believe this is happening to him. thank god this hasn't been leaked to social media.

i feel like shane would fucking DIE of humiliation if it happened, but the idea of a video going viral that's just the two of them slightly out of frame at an event and at a distance, so what the camera catches is shane takes a bite of a cookie, ilya turns and goes, "no! spit it out *muffled audio* slut. bad." and shane immediately grabs a napkin and spits it out, and then ilya puts a hand on his back and the two of them walk out of the room very fast.

and the reaction online is oh my GOD??? ilya rozanov treats him like this??? what an ASSHOLE?? controlling what he eats?? calling him a SLUT IN PUBLIC?? BECAUSE HE WANTED A *COOKIE*??? and then making him LEAVE???

and how do you even START to explain, "no, my husband has food allergies, and it's an ongoing joke that food loves him or is a slut and will kill him. he thought the cookie was one of the safe ones we requested catering to have, but it was one of the ones from a multi-pack i saw earlier, and there were peanut butter cookies near it, and saying the cookie is a slut was the fastest way to communicate that he needed to spit it out NOW so he could go rinse his mouth out."

Like, this mindset makes everything that happens in the story absolutely hilarious, in particular the whole first interactions bit.

From Rocky's point of view he sent a simple model of the local star systems to indicate where he was from hoping these new creatures would indicate where they were from. He put it in a protective cylinder and sent it over to the ship. Something enormous climbs out of a hole in the side of their ship... Wait, did one of the creature go OUTSIDE its ship in a a god damn plastic bag just to catch it??? I better aim it at where it came out of so it doesn't do that again. Then when the cylinder gets back, the creatures have indicated where they're from by attaching a lollypop stick with chewinggum to the model... which has mostly fallen off in the heat. Also they put distilled fire in the cylinder???

The creature then climbs outside its ship, again, chiseled a lump of its ship with a hammer so it can send you a sample so you can join to it and... its made of thin sheets of soft lead???

Then on finally talking to this large creature he realises it's incredibly delicate like a jellyfish, so god damn stupid, has essentially no memory, and cant do basic maths. And you're supposed to be saving you're entire civilisation with this squishy idiot. But then a while later it turns around and explains relativistic time dilation and background radiation like its something he should have figured out already.

Ive heard multiple people describing Rocky seeing Grace like the equivalent of a dog, but he's really is more like hes a three and a half year old blind jellyfish. Its living in a frozen semi-vacuum of highly explosive gas, can't remember anything, needs to nap constantly or it becomes noticeably more stupid, and it's here to save the world.