Sanctuary for All

shane bringing home little glazed honey buns because the colour of them made him think of ilya's hair in the sunlight and he thought ilya might like a sweet treat

ilya emerging from the lake at the cottage with a smooth circular black rock in his hand and saying, 'look shane, it is like a puck!'

shane dutifully taking a photo of any dog he sees when he's out somewhere and sending it to ilya

ilya buying a silky red tie because he thinks shane would look nice in it, whether wearing it with a suit for a formal occasion or being tied to the headboard with it

the same bitches who see a man trying on candy scented perfume rather than axe body spray and go "omg you go girl!!" "see you during your transition sweetie! 😘" "which could mean nothing!" are the same bitches who decry the gender binary and say shit like "makeup has no gender!" "clothes have no gender!" "your self expression doesn't equal your gender!" it's almost like y'all see queerness as inherently feminine. hmm.

maybe this is a hot take, but goofing around with gender expression isn't restricted to queer people, nor should it be. cishet men can wear skirts and eyeliner. cishet girls can bind and cut their hair short. cishet people can get funky with presentation and still be happy as their agab. stop reinforcing gender binaries by calling every seemingly cishet person who decides to deviate from gender norms an egg

Martha Wells is pretty cool.

I like how she encourages people to just keep on creating. Doesn’t matter if you’re good or bad, what your goal is, what you’re writing. Just write.

Don’t let them take the joy away.

Ilya, admittedly, does not fully understand why Shane is so adamant about the sweatshirts. They'll be in Hockey gear most of the times anyway. It's only late one evening, after Ilya keeps asking, that Shane tells the truth. About how he liked that, at the cottage, they would sometimes wear each others clothes. And how he wished that they could do that outside of the summer as well. But that both of them get photographed by paparazzi so often that someone would notice if Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov were suddenly spotted wearing the same clothes (they once wore a beanie by the same brand back in 2015 and it sent the internet into a flurry for two weeks).

But. If they - and the other coaches - all wear sweaters that look the same. It wouldn't be as obvious. And one or both of them being spotted in the sweater will only mean that they are proud of the foundation.

"And if we happen to switch them. And i end up wearing yours, well", Shane shrugs with a small smile. "Nobody besides us will know."

More of this energy. Natalie Harp has entered the chat. #LibertyUniversity #HumanBinkie

#JonOssoff.

I was going to make a list, but then i realized this is a good time to share this book

Making Stuff and Doing things is a whole collection of old punk DIY zines about making and doing just about anything, even things you probably never knew you wanted to do.

Book binding? In there.

Making bowls from old vinyl records? I made a whole ton for my brother’s grad party last year.

Basics of guitar? Making rubber stamps? Silk screening? Composting? Homemade beer, root beer, and wine? Soymilk?? Quill pens??? All in there.

Since it’s more punk, it doesn’t have a ton of the folksy, cottage vibes/hobbies, but it’s all about being resourceful and sustainable, which they both have in common.

and he just left him

the man was legally dead for five years and you brought him back and you left him, AND you gave him a job, he didn’t even get a warning or a proper goodbye, bucky got something, at least according to the $2 russo brothers who MADE THE MOVIE yet they don’t know exactly what was said but something transpired between steve and bucky before steve went to return the stones and he told him he’d miss him

bucky got a goodbye, sam got a job and lost a friend

And an ad starts playing. I hover my finger over where the Skip Ad button will show up, but then I pause. Something is...off about this ad.

It's advertising some kind of audiobook app. A story is being told in the first person, the narrator is female and oddly monotone. "I was born with golden eyes. When I first opened them, my mother...turned to solid gold. Some thought I was blessed. Some thought I was cursed. And it kept happening."

The screen is showing short videos of the story as it's told, clips of a gorgeous auburn-haired protagonist in some kind of victorian fantasy setting who sometimes uncontrollably turns things into gold. It sounds like a bad fanfiction, and I want to see what exactly this is advertising, so I don't press the skip button. The narrator keeps talking.

And it just. keeps. going. Five minutes. Ten minutes. The protagonist is orphaned and living on the streets but also wearing gorgeous spotless dresses. Some muscled shirtless guy in primal tattoos and a kilt decides he's going to use her to get rich. And then the moon goddess comes down and said she's removing the protagonist's gift until her 18th birthday. The moon goddess is a badly-rendered transparent woman.

I realize this is AI. It's all AI. The story, the movie, the voice, everything. It's AI, and it's clearly been trained on fanfiction.

I'm morbidly curious to see how long this is going to go. It's becoming increasingly clear that no one was ever supposed to watch the ad for this long.

The muscled shirtless primal tattoo guy is named Alpha...something. I'll call him Alpha Bob. He's cruel and vicious and lives in a massive castle the size of a city. The protagonist turns 18 but there's no mention of her gold power thing returning. The setting is now a medieval fantasy.

Then another muscled shirtless primal tattoo guy appears named Alpha Steve. And now there's Betas and Omegas. Holy shit?

They're all werewolves, but no one ever changes into a werewolf. Random characters are introduced by name and never appear again. Every single male character is shirtless and has primal tattoos.

Alpha Steve is seduced by evil Beta Lucy, but then he smells protagonist and realizes she's he's destined mate. He immediately disappears from the narrative and is never seen again.

Alpha Bob shows up drunk and starts beating up the protagonist, who is now 16 and in high school, but she's also locked in a dungeon. Alpha Bob beats her up for a really prolonged period of time in what actually becomes really excessive gore. The protagonist dies.

The protagonist wakes up in the hospital. Her eyes are brown and purple now. The hospital is still in the massive city-sized medieval castle but there's also computers set into the desks and random medical equipment coming out of the castle walls.

The doctor is a shirtless old man with primal tattoos. I'm watching in fascinated horror. The nurse is evil but is also the protagonist's best friend. The nurse hands the protagonist a cup and a straw grows out of her mouth like a proboscis.

The doctor informs the protagonist that something strange is happening to her. The protagonist looks in the bathroom mirror and narrates how she's amazed that her mousey brown hair now has a streak of brilliant silver. The AI actress on the screen is still a redhead.

It's been half an hour. It feels like watching someone narrate the plot of a dream. I kind of want to keep watching longer to see how bonkers the AI-hallucinated story gets.

I ended up needing to leave to go to work around the time that protagonist started gaining mysterious powers (again). I'm posting this because I need to share this baffling experience with someone.