this has nothing to do with norse mythology

Shane isn’t super into the idea. “My parents don’t have a VHS player.”

“Is literally right beside your knee, Hollander.”

“Well, it’s boring! Why do you want to see a dumb recording of me as a kid anyway?”

“Because it’s adorable?” Ilya says incredulously. “And you are adorable?”

“Oh, I forgot we had that!” Yuna exclaims, coming to sit on the couch with her glass of wine. “God, I miss those days. Shane was the cutest timbit.”

Timbit, Ilya mouths to himself, his fingers curling around the tape. This is Shane as a timbit? In all his tiny little hockey gear at the Bell Center? Ilya needs to see it. “Shane.”

Shane looks at him and sighs.

They put the tape in.

Ilya almost dies as the grainy screen resolves itself into an MC and a tiny Shane, dressed in his hockey gear. His helmet is crooked on his head, his stick tap tap tapping against it as he stares at the interviewer, determined. His cheeks are big and round and pink from the cold of the ice, and though Ilya cannot make out his freckles, he knows from pictures that they’re there. The MC crouches down and a packed Bell Center is visible behind them.

“And here we have number 24, Shane Hollander!” The MC says in heavily accented English. “Let’s give him a round of applause. Shane, how are you feeling tonight, are you excited to be here?”

“Um. Yes.”

“And how old are you, Shane?”

Little Shane closes his eyes for a moment, taking a big, deep breath before reciting: “My name is Shane Hollander and I’m a hockey player. I am three years old and I go to Glebe Co-operative Nursery School in Ottawa and my mommy and daddy are Yuna and David. And I’m three.”

The MC laughs a little. “That’s a great introduction, Shane, thank you. Do you have anyone here with you tonight, cheering you on in the audience?”

Shane’s eyes open, but he doesn’t break out into a toothy grin. No, instead, Shane—serious, no-nonsense Shane—nods and leans in to the microphone like he’s giving a post-game interview. “Yes, my mommy and my daddy.”

“And are they big Metros fans?”

“Yes.”

“What about you?”

“Yes, too. They’re gonna go all the way this year. They have all the pieces for a winning team.”

“That’s what we love to hear, Shane, we agree and we love the confidence. Can we expect to see you on the ice someday? Do you want to be a hockey player when you grow up?”

“Yes, I’m a hockey player.”

“Do you want to play for Montreal?”

“Yes.”

“Can we get some encouragement for the team from you, Shane? Maybe a Go Metros Go?”

This, Shane takes extremely seriously. Ilya watches him nod with all the solemnity of a general going to war, and then releases his own tiny, passionate battle cry: “Go Metros Go!”

“Shane Hollander, everyone, let’s give him another round of applause!”

🏴‍☠️💖😤 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐚𝐝 𝐋𝐞𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐬 is one of my biggest hyperfixations 😤💖🏴‍☠️   Now that I’ve turned 30, I’ve been feeling very nostalgic and turning to things that make me feel truly like myself. Sinbad was integral to my childhood and it was one of those movies where everyone was hot 😂 I even have memories of my little sister and I kissing the TV screen and begging my dad to draw Eris the Goddess of Discord for me.     Now as an adult I watch this film on repeat! I love the designs and the score, I love learning about how it’s a great pirate film but it’s technically not a good “Sinbad” adaptation because the writers decided to make it Greco-Roman inspired… and I love engaging with the queerness of “taking your friend’s execution sentence because you believe in him so much” or “physically abandoning your childhood BFF because he’s betrothed to a total babe”.     So here’s my little portrait of Proteus, Marina, and Sinbad wrapped in a little hammock of togetherness because what if “This is my boyfriend, Sinbad, and this is Sinbad’s boyfriend Proteus”🥰  

Alexa play "I want my boyfriend's to kiss" by Ashnikko!

I like to think, and now I'm in interpretation/headcanon land, that while there are no actual romantic feelings, or least very little, I think it's Ilya who thought that maybe he would end up with Svetlana. Both Shane and Ilya are affected by compulsory heterosexuality, even though Ilya is bisexual. Ilya never thought he would end up in a committed relationship with a man. And this goes with my analysis that Ilya believed that life would simply "happen" to him. That there are rules to be followed and yes, Shane, we can get together and fuck, it's simple and doesn't mean anything, but in the end we will take on the yoke of the roles that are expected of us.

Having Svetlana there as a close friend with history is a departure from book-Ilya, who doesn't have a person like this in his life, and is overall more alone. But even with the support from Svetlana, show-Ilya has far less hope for the future than Shane by the time we get to Shane's injury in episode 5. He's packing and heading back to Russia, back to his family's expectations, maybe to mend fences with his brother and fall back into his old role—we can't say for sure. Obviously, we see that Ilya has a change of heart, and decides to take the risk to be with Shane, and to leave Russia for good so that he can live an open life eventually.

This leads me to season 2 and the adaptation of The Long Game. Ilya isolates himself in Ottawa, cut off from the transient friendships he made in Boston. He's also not as close with his current team as he thinks he should be. He specifically regrets losing touch with Svetlana, who in the books is an old flame/hook-up situation, but I don't think, with what we've seen of Svetlana and Ilya's relationship in the show, that it has to be much different than the books in season 2. If anything, it's more heartbreaking and shows the stark reality of Ilya's worsening depression. I can see missed calls on Ilya's phone from Svetlana, and unanswered texts. We see in the show that she knows Ilya is in love with a man, but we don't know for sure that she knows it's Shane. What if Ilya doesn't tell her?

⊹ How does someone get magic in the first place?? are they born with it, do they study for years, does it choose them, did they make a terrible deal with something they shouldn't have. this matters SO much for your storywhat are the limits. please give your magic limits.

⊹ What can't it do. what happens when someone pushes too far. A magic system with no consequences is so boring and also makes your plot unsolvable because why doesn't the protagonist just magic their way out of everything

⊹ Does using magic cost something? energy, years off your life, memories, sanity, blood. the more personal the cost the better honestly

⊹ How do people in your world feel about magic. Feared? Worshipped? Regulated by the government? illegal underground thing? totally normal like electricity? the social aspect is so underrated

⊹ Who has access to it? is it only the wealthy/powerful or can anyone learn it. Because that says a LOT about your world's inequality situation

⊹ Can it be taken away? stolen? blocked? this is great for conflict

⊹ Are there different types of magic or schools of it and do those groups like each other (they don't. they never do. use this)

⊹ What are the physical signs that someone has/uses magic. Glowing eyes, burns on their hands, going grey early, nosebleeds. Little details like this make it feel so real

⊹ Has the magic changed over time? like was it stronger/different a hundred years ago and nobody knows why what happened

⊹ is there a moral line that magic users aren't supposed to cross and who decided where that line was and why does your protagonist keep getting close to it?

apparently, cats' kidneys tend to be the thing that takes them down, something about their bodies being unable to self-clean their kidneys, and the vaccine is supposed revitalize the body's ability to do just that. It would be very VERY fucking cool to have cats suddenly reaching 30 years of age be the normal thing.

dude cracked the case about WHY kidneys fail, across the board as far as i can tell. turns out there's a specific molecule whose job it is to attach to waste and signal macrophages to come eat it. it remains inactive in cats for some reason, but the molecule is still there. basically what he's done is found the switch to activate them. this will be profound not only for our domestic babies, but for big cats too - especially cheetahs!

although his research was focused on cats, it's already being used to develop drugs for humans too!

on top of that, since these molecules are tags for waste, this could also dramatically lower the rate of fatty liver disease, liver cancer, urinary crystals, rheumatoid arthritis, and even some neurological cases! like, they're hoping it may have an impact on parkinson's and alzheimers, but it DOES have an impact on stroke recovery. like. holy shit.

furthermore, he's insisting that the feline drug be affordable if and when it rolls out onto the market. he wants this to be something anyone can get for their cat!! idk how much sway he'll have over the human drug, but hopefully enough that it, too, won't be that expensive.

annnnnd in his research that he's still doing for the human side of things, he's found a potential link between this molecule and estrogen. in the 20,000 samples he's tested, women between ages 10 and 29 had the highest amount of this molecule present in their blood (a higher amount means Something Fucky is going on, essentially. There's a higher amount of waste the body is trying to clean out) but it drops down to be almost equal amongst men and women after menopause. it hasn't been looked into yet, but fuck, just the fact it's noted and known and probably WILL be looked into soon??? imagine if this is what leads to figuring out all the various ways the ovaries and uterus fucks with people and how to fix it. or even like, maybe there's something about estrogen that makes it work better. who knows! but it's rad the link is there to be researched :D

As for the study itself, the 360 day follow up on stage 3 kidney failure kitties showed that the control had a survival rate of about 20%, while the test group had a survival rate of 80%