#opalapparition

I will not be explaining Heated Rivalry, as I assume if you are reading an overly intellectual Tumblr post about Wolfbird you know the context. I will be spoiling The Long Game in this paragraph so please feel free to skip it. Rachel Reid wrote a romance novel, following almost every single trope she could find, both in the genre and within fanfiction. Enemies to lovers, check. Meet cute at a coffee (smoothie) shop, check. Very public coming out with people clapping, check. Not knowing how to progress a plot so crashing a plane, check. There are tiny levels of intertextuality that Rachel uses, team dynamics, geographical locations, cars, even music (Bad Bunny is mentioned as someone Ilya likes at some point). But Rachel’s intertextuality is rarely impacting the story, apart from core character traits, like Ilya being from Russia or playing for Ottawa to stay closer to Shane. All the cities could be renamed to fictional, fantasy states, and all the music could be in-universe concepts (like Fabian for example) with no major impact on the story. Is intertextuality required for a piece to be considered good? No. But sure as hell it makes it enjoyable for nerds like me, with a useless degree.

Wolfbird as a text does not exist without intertextuality. It is, at its core, and on every level Kristeva studied, so inherently tied to other texts (and Heated Rivalry is not the strongest of these, which does not stop being amusing to me) that from a literary standpoint, not only fanfiction, but in general as its own text, I keep being surprised with how far one can go.

Text and Text

In literary theory, there is a concept of a horizon of expectations. When you pick up a piece of work, that is vaguely described to you, you mostly know what to expect. You can be disappointed (think Wicked Part 2, what a waste of over 2 hours of my life), you can have your expectations met exactly the way you wanted (two hot hockey players having a lot of sex and then getting together), or as an absolute treat have your expectations exceeded (look a long story about BDSM, this seems hot, why is my heart broken?). My friend, who waits for Wolfbird to be finished, asked why I refer to a concept of Wolfbird Shane and Wolfbird Ilya as different people than HR Shane and Ilya, and it took me good 15 minutes to explain, mostly because I am autistic and infodump to hell, but also because they are so similar and different at the same time that I need to explain the nuances, without ruining it. HR and Wolfbird correspond, but when HR meets expectations of the genre, Wolfbird exceeds them.

The best way to explain it is by a story of me buying a punnet of strawberries from Boots before my flight to Japan and having them on the plane, when they tasted, you guessed it, exactly like strawberries, to then buy a similar punnet of discounted gourmet strawberries in Osaka and call all my friends from the hotel while eating them to tell them I could never expect a strawberry to be this good. I still think about them. The taste was still strawberry, but on Olympics banned performance enhancers. WB Shane and Ilya are the strawberries from Osaka. They would not exist without the Boots ones, and they are still strawberries but somehow the sun hit them in just the right spot, and the farmer was extra careful when picking them.

Text and Other Texts

Was I ever interested in watching anything Kar-Wai directed? Once, when I needed a chill movie for purposes I can’t openly discuss and wanted something similar to Amelie. I watched 30 minutes of In The Mood For Love, decided nothing happens, and turned it off to binge watch Adventure Time.

Shane’s autism presents in a special interest in cinema and in perceiving the world like a movie script, and I can’t begin to explain how accurate this is, especially in the new chapter where he tries to annotate a scene and change it. It’s also preferring to seek for parallel situations in media, especially the ones you know well, to be able to comprehend your current situation. Very clever, very neurodivergent, extremely well presented.

I want to look at three core texts that drive the plot of Wolfbird forward and become such a clever extended metaphor it makes me angry. A metaphor on time, a metaphor on space, and a metaphor on power.

Interstellar is a metaphor on time. So much of Wolfbird is dictated and driven by time. Ilya’s time is essentially money, but also the way he choses to charge for it and count it is completely arbitrary and directly impacts the plot. In Interstellar, Cooper needs to be careful with his planetary adventures, as they there are consequences on the Earth’s sequence of events, to then he is trapped in a tesseract and uses time to communicate with the one he loves the most. You won’t guess who uses time in the same way.

Within Wolfbird (the actual non-profit club now) Ilya has a level of control over his time, as in if he picks the shifts or not, and his wages are also dictated to him and shared with the owners. His hour of work is more of 35 minutes of work if I am calculating correctly, which I probably am not (in terms of money he makes for it). On the phone with Shane, Ilya can calculate himself (and we suspect he does calculate, as he pauses before offering Shane the number), still charging for his time, but in a less structured and dictated way, first time disruption. His concept of time them gets literally thrown out of the window (and into his bag, in a form of a rose gold Tag Heuer) when he decides not to charge for aftercare, which the moment they discuss movies together is just hanging around, and Ilya letting himself enjoy it. Ilya never charges for texts and keeps in touch with Shane. But that’s his own, private, uncharged for time, so it blends the work/private boundary, Ilya is in a tesseract now, I hate my degree.

In The Mood For Love (ITMFL) is a metaphor on space, and I don’t mean the stars and the planets and the moon but both the physical concept of it as well as relationship forming or boundaries. In short, ITMFL is about two people who seem to fall in love with each other but promise that they won’t be together. They then keep missing each other, walking past, away, not matching emotionally. At the current point of a WIP, there is no sensible way for Shane and Ilya to be together. Both know this is impossible. None of them admits that there are feelings beyond the transaction. The moment one tries, the other withdraws, and there actually should not be trying, Svetlana makes it crystal clear. Nothing makes you want someone more, than being told you can’t have them, but you know you can’t! Cashmere blankets be damned! So for both of them it is a secret, the one you cover with mud, and both have their reasons, but, just like Mrs Chan and Chow, they are crossing the boundaries of what they discussed. The most heartbreaking thing is, you can’t pinpoint the exact moment these boundaries are crossed, just like in ITMFL. Shane does not get his answer.

Spirited Away is a metaphor on power, and this one impressed me even more than ITMFL. Spoilers for Chapter 14 if you have not read it yet (and if not, what are you doing, go and read). Spirited Away is its essence about greed. Opal uses No-Face for the appeal of seemingly easy sex work, but also hockey contracts. Money equals power. Shane has more than he can count and is deeply lonely and unhappy. Ilya does not have enough, ever, and calculates everything, but does not actively seek more (even if the thoughts are always there). The easiest solution, that both us as readers and Shane comes up with is “why can’t he just pay Ilya a million for a session and that solves all the problems?” to which Opal gives us Shane looking at his reflection in the window and seeing No-Face vomiting gold from Spirited Away. We want Shane to be Chihiro and he sees himself as an ominous figure, offering pointless gold. Because, in opposition to HR, Wolfbird has no easy solution. There are theoretical ones – Shane can establish a charity for Ilya to work in and pay him a wage, that sounds less No-Face, but we are not at that point yet and sticking to what we have any attempt to use money to solve the problem puts us on a magical realism train to tragedy. Show, don’t tell. Instead of going through an extensive explanation of why Shane can’t just give Ilya the money, Opal sits us down on a couch with Pike’s family and makes us watch Miyazaki. The level of this intertextuality, of using a completely separate text, to push the plot and character development of your own text makes me itch to go back to uni and write about it academically, because this is sheer literary talent and I almost clapped on the bus back home when I was reading.

Text and the World

Bienvenue à Montréal, also known as the city (and the languages) are the characters. Think Carlos Ruiz Zafón and the way Barcelona is a story character, just like Dublin is in Ulysess and London in Neverwhere.

Shooting HR in Hamilton, Ontario, was a financial choice and I respect it, as Rachel didn’t really involve much geographical work in her books and as I said, it could theoretically be set anywhere.

Wolfbird does not exist without Montreal. It’s almost like a love letter to the city. If it was ever picked up for a movie or a show, there is no other place you can shoot it. You need the river, you need the ice, you need the snow, the ice rinks, the metro stations, the languages.

And oh god, the linguist in me cannot contain herself. The language is another intertextual medium that is used to an extend and with an intention that I don’t see in literature, not to mention fanfiction. A regular fanfiction use of Russian is to basically throw some terms of endearment, more or less serious, sometimes in Cyrillic, mostly for fun, and to reassure the readers Ilya is still in touch with his Russian heritage. Also, it’s fun as a reader to suddenly realise there’s certain words you can now instantly recognise (in my case, блять, люблю and идиот). But why would we stop there, no, let’s use the language to represent not only cultural heritage, but also the character’s personality, development, and throw it there as foreplay without fetishising anything. Let me lay on train tracks with my diploma now. Over and over again, Ilya struggles because he can’t express himself in English as much as he can in Russian, mirroring the famous under the bridge monologue in HR, but also using language lacunaes (you are using the concept of TOSKA? In FAN WRITING?!) to show emotional involvement, sensitivity, and general tenderness of a character trapped between countries, languages, laws, attachments, duties, I can’t. Yes, this is still intertextuality.

One of my all time favourites uses of languages, conveniently not translated, because of course the writer assumes we are clever and trusts us to be, and lets us develop our skill is the conversation that happens between Ilya and Shane in the foreplay scene, after Ilya cuts his hair, Chapter 12, named so accurately I want to crawl in a hole, no pun intended. I read so much PWPs in my life that should validate a clinical diagnosis (and potential trauma) to the point of being actually bored with sex in fanfiction or literature in general as you know, you can’t invent a wheel, right?

YEAH FUCK NO OPAL CAN.

You think you have seen bratting? You think you have seen erotic foreplay?! YEAH YOU HAVEN’T BECAUSE SHANE HOLLANDER AND FRENCH. Because of course. Because Montreal is a character and French is its cousin and why would you use French in that way, you absolute show off. T’es content? Like fuck content. I love it so much it makes me beyond angry.

Let’s break it down. Both characters speak English and this is how they choose to communicate. Shane likes to be good, likes to follow instructions, is not really mean or disobedient on purpose, but he is still hesitant and anxious, a character trait being explored over and over again. Don’t get me started on Dominants building their sub’s confidence or I will combust. But having to admit his admiration for Ilya, express actual feelings? That’s too much for our little Hollander (insert the Lando Norris audio). What does Shane do? The best fucking linguistic thing to happen in the history of usage of non-English in fiction, hides it in French.

HIDES. IT. IN. FRENCH.

Is it bratting? I don’t think it is, Ilya disagrees, it does not matter because Ilya picks up the game incredibly quickly and just throws Russian at him, because two can play the game, and he will be fucking him in about 10 paragraphs so let’s have fun. It’s also so beyond erotic, I am ruined for anything else. And it would not work with any other character, in a different situation, I doubt it would work in Heated Rivalry, it’s so inherently Wolfbird dynamic, strengthening my WB-Ilya and WB-Shane distinction from their precursors, making them so vivid, human and incredibly entertaining.

Conclusion

I mean the conclusion to this is that Opal is a genius, but we knew it anyway.

Go read about intertextuality, learn some French, skip Chapter 13 unless you have a therapist booked, and read enjoyable pieces of work that make you think.