Simp time

dnf fic | rated teen | 1k wc

george: interesting timing, does he know im live i don't know?

george: im live [x3]

dream: [inaublie cause of music?]

george: you gonna get me copyright strike what's going on !! (laughs)

dream: alright i have a confrontation actually, you ready to be confronted live?

george: okay...(smiles)

dream: so, i was on minecraft. i just happened to be like on my mc homescreen and randomly something popped up in my mulitiplayer screen at the bottom it said "land (?) world georgenotfound."

[george laughs 🥰]

dream: and the i was like what? george that's weird i tried to join it said like outdated client i was like oh okay and then i checked it was gone and then i realized you where live and i was like wait what? is he cheating? did he allow–

george: i have an answer don't worry

dream: let's see what it is. i figured fot transparency sake i would confront you on stream, so your stream could hear your answer

george: yeah, i mean thats interesting. i mean im really glad im not doing anything bad here cause this would be really awkward getting exposed right now.

george: but look at this 🥰 uhm well i wasn't doing anything wrong. but now it's going to look sus. but i will show you.

dream: alright

george: alright watch this so i have a different version of the world called "Hi." and i was in here taking a screenshot for the thumbnail. however, i actually don't have a custom thumbnail for this stream.

dream: ohhhh

george: but i was in here in creative mode [laughs🥰] looking to take a thumbnail. cause look how did you think i took this thumbnail before with all the furnances lit up?okay, the thumbnails aren't legit. well actually, i think all the thumbnails are legit except for the last one.

dream: wow

george: it's a new innovation

dream: you know what, i do believe you. to be fair, just to be clear if i didn't believe you then you know then i probably wouldn't have confronted you on stream. but i figured there was some reasonable explanation just based on how much you talked to me about how legitimate you've done this and how you do not want any like. you've made it clear you don't want any cheats, you don't want anything, you want no help. so i was like there must be an explanation." im interested to hear what his explanation was ."

george: yeah i mean, you could have messaged me. what if i was cheating? that would have been really awkward.

dream: it would have been kinda funny. it would have been really funny actually if you were cheating and that's what-

george: look at these furnances. they're not even on

dream: yeah.

george: but yeah, i have a duplicate version of the world

dream: imagine i just joined. i was going to join. i was almost you would have been like "what the fuck." if i was in the right version i would have been in.

george: i guess like how is dream here (laughs) but yeah. i guess that's the answer.

dream: i guess it's interesting that you have to open your world to land [?] like a lot of cheats.

george: yeah, that is interesting. anyway yeah that is the answer

meanwhile, when shane is the one going through it—he's anxious about being outed and doesnt want to come out due to the league's homophobia, he's personally threatened by the commissioner, he struggles with disordered eating, if not an outright eating disorder (outright saying he diets for a sense of control, feeling guilty about tasting lemonade on his boyfriend's lips, his low point is eating one singular snicker's bar)—ilya fails to reciprocate empathy. shane tells ilya about the commissioner threatening him and ilya basically goes great now my bitch bf will never want to come out 🙄 (compare this with how he reacts when his reformed bigot white bestie troy was threatened by the commissioner: ilya is automatically protective of him.) shane starts an unhealthily restrictive diet due to his fears of aging (read: being pushed) out of the sport, and ilya looks down on him for it and mocks his diet to his face. shane, who is a hypervisible athlete of color in an extremely white sport, looks uncomfortable in a room full of white people talking about the league's issues, and ilya deduces that this is because shane doesnt know "the dark side of hockey" the way he does. this is a ridiculous assumption that should reveal a worrying lack of empathy for his partner of color, especially since throughout the series there is a pattern of other hockey players targeting shane with homophobic language, which ilya has been present for. except rachel herself states shane has no trauma from the sport and shane's own pov asserts that hockey has never made him sad.

do you guys get where im going with this? the elephant in the room is race. rachel narratively blames shane, hyperscrutinizes his flaws and justifies or provides excuses for ilya's, because she has implicit racist biases and subconsciously sees empathy as a one-way obligation in their relationship. ilya lacks empathy for shane because she lacks empathy for shane and thinks ilya is right. she monopolizes empathy for ilya because he is white and because she doesnt see characters of color as fully people and capable of having their own interiority or struggles to explore. if you've read tough guy or role model, you can see this same exact thing play out in ryan price and fabian salah's relationship or with troy barrett and his ex adrian dela cruz.

and remember how i said that there's a pattern of other hockey players being homophobic to shane? this is never brought up in shane's pov, not even hinted at. we only see these instances through the pov of white characters and are only given explorations of how they feel, not shane. shane is completely absent except as a prop to make her sadboy white characters feel tormented and angry, and rachel never connects his "self-absorbed" anxieties about wanting to stay closeted to the disproportionate homophobia he already faces, because rachel is uninterested in giving shane grace.

so when rachel says ilya's biggest flaw is his fear of being hurt (note how the language centers his hurt, not how his actions cause hurt), while shane's is his supposed selfishness (is shane not also afraid of being hurt? isnt that where his food issues and unwillingness to come out come from)? when she said shane is too focused on his "ridiculous" diet and not on "actually important things" like his depressed boyfriend? when she said in a reddit AMA that she only gave shane food issues to give ilya something to poke fun at? when that one interviewer asked her about the criticisms of how she wrote her asian character and she pivoted to talking about ilya's childhood trauma? her fetishistic descriptions of shane and fabian, to the point you can tell she wanted to call them exotic and her editor probably told her to tone it down? the way she contrasts adrian's appearance and supposed shortcomings with harris? her insistence that her books are challenging hockey culture while completely dismissing how hostile and dehumanizing it can be to people of color? and last but not least, THE DICK SIZE RANKING?

So in addition to that bias she already holds, I think the real reason she continues to be weird towards Hudson is because of what this comment highlights.

She absolutely must hate that Hudson is getting praised for playing Shane in a way she never got praised for how she wrote him. The same fans who loved and were absolutely endeared by Hudson's performance are mostly the same ones who critiqued how she wrote Shane in the first place. And that must bother her so much because she keeps getting the same critiques in regard to Shane. Even though she did nothing to actually response to the criticism, in her mind, she should also be getting the praise for Shane because she really believes how Hudson played Shane is how she wrote Shane in the books. In her recent interviews where she continues to double down on Shane being selfish, Shane doesn't have an ED, Shane doesn't have trauma, etc it's so clear that she doesn't actually believe her characterization of Shane has any issues. She just thinks the fans critiquing her just misunderstood her, hence why she keeps doubling down on the points she's been called out for. To her, it's not fair that Hudson is getting all this love and being given credit for bringing Shane to life as a fully fleshed out nuanced character. Because she thinks that's what she did in the books.

okay I’m running away now bc I’m shy 🙈 🏃

team turned on him. turns out people he thought were his friends apparently very much were not. pushed out of the place that's been his home and his life's work like he was nothing. massive pay cut. no longer a captain. no longer star center. personally threatened by the head of the organization he's worked for since he was a teenager.

and adding onto ALL OF THIS is that he's the first asian player to have done all of this. he has come SO FAR and worked SO fucking diligently, and he has done it all on extra hard mode. AND HE STILL DID IT. he put his head down, got to work, let SO MUCH shit roll off him because he had his eyes on the prize, and he MADE IT. he fucking MADE IT.

and then it ALL gets taken away from him.

like this got played as a laugh, but idk man. in light of what happened, this feels so fucking MEAN. yeah he and ilya chirp each other and enjoy it, but this just feels like something that would still be fucking RAW emotionally.

yeah he got ilya, but he lost literally fucking. EVERYTHING ELSE. his fucking ENTIRE CAREER got a hard reset that was completely out of his control.