WolfStarLights

I see so much misinformation going around, and because as a lawyer by training, I'm a strong believer of facts, I decided to record everything that is FACTUAL about the Hudson Williams incident.

What is the discourse about?

On 6th June 2026, an anonymous Twitter account (@truthsosad - deleted by now) posted a picture from 2018, where a highschooler Hudson Williams, surrounded by 4 white teenagers (presumably schoolmates) was photographed in a completely scribbled over clothes, face and body, including an upside down cross and an incorrectly drawn swastika on his head. The other teenager on that picture do not have the same hate symbol, but do also have doodles. The 4 girls are smiling, Hudson isn't.

What is the context of the picture?

Several accounts (including a mom and one of the teachers from the school) confirm that the picture was taken during an end-of-year graffiti party, where underage teens of the two final years went drinking outside and doodled on each other clothes, faces and body. Several accounts confirm that it would not be unusual for some edgy or vile pictures being drawn, often as a prank without the other kids' knowledge.

My credentials: 2 graduate degrees researching multilingualism & second language phonology. Plus copyediting a book written by a first language speaker of Russian & Ukrainian after being her coworker for a decade <3

1. Pronoun drop: e.g. "is good". It is common with second language speakers, but I'm gonna support Luula's analysis of this as based on a mis-hearing of 'It's good' in a Russian accent - Russian has palatalized stops and the frication makes listeners reclassify them as fricatives. t^j -> s

2. Article issues: most common error, even amongst very fluent speakers. Includes mixing up indefinite (a/an) and definite (the) articles, dropping articles (e.g. 'I was going to store'), and hypercorrection (inserting unnecessary articles, e.g., 'I am going to the home').

3. Copula deletion: Russian has a null copula (when you can replace 'to be' with an =, that's the copula) so copula drop can happen in English (e.g., "I a teacher"). This one is drilled really hard for Russian learners so it doesn't come up as often as you would think. I can't think of canon examples of Ilya doing this.

4. Unfamiliarity with vocab: non-Russian fic writers - try checking a Russian/English dictionary because there are lots of English loanwords in Russian (or other Latinate loans) that share a common root. Luula's anon brought this up, but as an example, 'autism' in Russian is 'аутизм' and is basically pronounced the same - they are cognates. Ilya would have a very good guess of what this word means, along with other loanwords.

In my experience, idioms are some of the hardest/last vocab items to grasp because the words are common (so English speakers don't expect there to be a problem) but the meaning is non-obvious. Lots of English speakers won't even say the whole idiom, just expect people to understand from a partial recital. E.g. "When you assume..." ; "the best laid plans..." ; "speak of the devil" ; "when in Rome" etc.

5. Word order: English is pretty strict about word order, Russian has more free order (supported by their very robust case system + grammatical gender). This mostly comes up with subordinate clause order. For one example, I've noticed that English writers tend to put clarifying phrases before, Russian speakers after. (E.g., a Russian speaker might have written the previous sentence with 'as one example' at the end). These re-phrasings aren't necessarily ungrammatical in English, but they may come off as confusing (for very complex sentences) or the overall pattern across multiple sentences comes off as unnatural.

6. Question tags: fanfic writers love to give Ilya simple question tags as a vocab quirk (e.g. 'it's special, no?' ; 'You like this, yes?'. I haven't memorably experienced this from the Russian first language speakers I know, but Russian does have question tags like this (e.g., I understand that так is used pretty similarly to Canadian English 'eh?')

7. W vs V: I definitely exit out of fics if they give Ilya a use of "w" like Chekov from Star Trek. This is made up & fake.

8. Avoiding Do / Don't: English is weird about the verb 'to do' and lots of the time you can leave it out (even if native speakers would use it). Using question tags for yes/no questions is one way of avoiding constructions with 'do', another is using the target verb rather than replacing with do. E.g. 'Do you like to row?' An English native might reply 'yes, I do' while an ESL speaker might be more likely to use 'yes, I like to row' or 'yes, I like rowing'. Again, not incorrect but when it builds up as a pattern of speech it sounds less natural to a native speaker.

9. Skipping contractions: very common amongst all kinds of ESL speakers. English speakers will throw in a "had'nt've" and always use "doesn’t" over "does not". But lots of ESL speakers just pronounce each word always - especially if there is an auxiliary verb. It can be difficult to remember combinations like - is "I've not" or "I haven't" more natural (& the answer is different for different English varieties).

10. Verbs & nouns paired with prepositions: it's just really common to select the wrong preposition or drop it altogether. E.g., "baked with hands" instead of "baked by hand"; 'compliment about' vs. 'compliment on', etc.

I'll add that not knowing a cognate can make sense in some situations. Like, if you've never used that word in English before, you don't necessarily know if it's the same in both without looking it up. But there are categories of words where it's reasonably assumed: science, medicine, academic studies. For those categories, you can generally say your word in an English accent, which might not be quite exact. For example, Ilya might guess 'hypertonia' instead of 'hypertension.'

Paint some rocks

Ask your neighbor how they're doing today

Vacuum under your furniture

Watch the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz

Practice that new skill you've been learning

Take the long way to the grocery store

Write a love letter and mail it to yourself

Ask the oldest person you know about their childhood

Paint your nails a fun color

Practice a tongue twister

Make a puppet out of an old sock

Put googly eyes in funny places in your home

Switch out the laces in your shoes

Climb a tree

Try out a new makeup look

Research or brainstorm a new tattoo idea

Light a scented candle

Sing along to the radio

Build a lego set

Try out a new snack

Play in the dirt with your hands

Take an old buzzfeed personality quiz

Research facts about your favorite animal

Masturbate

Go on a walk and say hello to everyone you see (or just one person)

Draw with sidewalk chalk

Do that chore you've been putting off

Look up upcoming events in your area

Spin until you get too dizzy

Put your favorite artist on shuffle and see how fast you can name the songs as they play

Make a paper snowflake

Learn to sew/mend

Go to a pet store and watch the animals

Find a grassy hill to roll down

Go to a park and watch/listen to the children play

Write a haiku

Check the batteries in your smoke detector(s)

Read a book you've read before

via Canadian Academy

It’s the final few days of the Bluminarmour Project! After some issues with Kickstarter let’s see how far we can get!

If you want to see fantasy tropes, historical movement and silly tricks tested in authentic full plate armour, please consider chucking a few quid over (or like and share this post):

Kickstarter removed my highest funding tier so I lost £11k of funding since earlier today.

BUT

Daily Nishinoya — day 16

Race absolutely matters. Racism absolutely exists. But different racial groups are stereotyped in different ways, and those stereotypes can produce completely different social expectations.

For example, I’ve seen people criticize Rachel and Jacob for joking about Hudson being unintelligent because he’s a person of color. If Hudson were Black, I would understand that criticism more, because there is a long history of anti-Black stereotypes portraying Black people as unintelligent. But Hudson is Asian. Asian men are stereotyped in almost the opposite way. They’re often assumed to be intelligent, studious, and academically successful. The stereotype is still racist, but it’s a different stereotype. It doesn’t suddenly become an anti-Asian stereotype just because we’ve replaced “Asian” with the broader category of “POC.”

The same thing happens constantly in fanfiction with Shane.

A lot of writers portray Shane as being afraid to fight because he knows he’ll be judged more harshly than white players. I understand where that idea is coming from, but as a black person I’ve never found it particularly convincing.

If Shane were black, that analysis would make more sense to me. Black men are often stereotyped as aggressive, which means behavior that is considered acceptable from white athletes is often interpreted differently when black ones do it.

But asian men occupy a very different place in the racial imagination. They’re frequently stereotyped as passive, non-threatening, weak, nerdy, emasculated, etc. If racial stereotypes were influencing Shane’s approach to hockey, I could just as easily imagine the opposite dynamic: feeling pressure to prove he’s aggressive enough to belong. Maybe he’s fighting TOO much.

But that doesn’t make sense for Shane. He’s the league’s golden boy. He’s polite, media-friendly, and heavily inspired by Sidney Crosby. He’s a superstar. Fighting is often delegated to players lower on the depth chart whose role is specifically to provide physicality. Star players generally aren’t expected to be enforcers. Teams usually want their elite talent scoring goals, not sitting in the penalty box after dropping the gloves.

So Shane not fighting much doesn’t strike me as evidence of racial pressure. It strikes me as evidence that he’s Shane Hollander.

Crosby is a useful comparison here. For years, people mocked him for not being physical enough (and for talking to the refs too much). They questioned his toughness and masculinity. They called him “Crybaby Crosby” or “Cindy Crosby.” Fans edited photos of him in dresses or makeup. The criticism wasn’t really about hockey. The joke was that he wasn’t a “real man.”

And that’s a white player.

Imagine how much worse those conversations could become if the player in question were Asian.

That’s the kind of racial dynamic I could actually see affecting Shane: not people thinking he’s too aggressive, but people questioning whether aggressive ENOUGH.

There’s a good chance that if Shane fought exactly like many white players, he probably still wouldn’t be viewed as tough enough. Meanwhile, if a Black player fought exactly like those same white players, he might be interpreted as more aggressive.

People often criticize Rachel for not doing much racial analysis in the books. But sometimes fandom fills that gap with racial analysis that feels disconnected from both hockey culture and the specific stereotypes that affect different racial groups.

Not every POC experience is interchangeable.

A stereotype that affects Black athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Asian athletes. A stereotype that affects Latino athletes is not automatically a stereotype that affects Indigenous athletes.

If we’re going to talk about race- and we should- we have to talk about the actual racial dynamics at play, not just substitute “person of color” for a more specific analysis.

And hockey culture matters.

Hockey is one of the only major sports where players are allowed to drop their gloves and just start throwing punches. Losing teeth is practically a badge of honor. Violence isn’t some weird exception to hockey culture- t’s part of the culture.

The expectation isn’t simply that players avoid violence. A lot of the time, the expectation is that they embrace it.

One of Rachel’s other books, Tough Guy, is literally about a player whose whole struggle is that everyone expects him to fight because he’s huge. He’s a giant enforcer, and people assume physicality should be his role whether he wants it or not. The conflict isn’t that everyone thinks he’s too aggressive. The conflict is that hockey culture expects him to be aggressive.

(Honestly, if they can’t find a 6’7 white redheaded actor who perfectly matches the description, they could probably get away with casting a 6’2 Black guy and nothing would change).

That’s why I think people sometimes miss how much hockey culture itself matters when discussing race in fandom.

There are even real-world examples of this conversation. When the Team USA Olympic roster was announced, a lot of people were confused about why Jason Robertson wasn’t selected despite being the highest-scoring American player. And one of the arguments that kept coming up was that players like Robertson aren’t always perceived as bringing the same level of physicality or aggression as some of the other stars who made the team.

Whether you agree with that assessment or not isn’t really the point. The point is that toughness, aggression, and physicality are things hockey people talk about constantly when evaluating players.

Which is why I struggle with fandom interpretations that assume every racialized hockey experience would look the same.

Tempted to actually put this on spotify so I can secretly stream it at work...

ETA2: we do use inches/miles in poetic ways ("he was lost in thought/miles away" or "his lips were a bare inch away").

and shane is like “um not really. we live in ottawa and we’re mostly on the road for work.” and devon *polite and clueless* says “oh cool. what do you do?” “uh we play hockey.” “oh you’re hockey players? like professionally? sorry, i don’t really know anything about hockey. i’m a software engineer.” and shane sips his little ginger ale and is like “oh, that’s cool.” and devon is like “i mean not really, i don’t love it. i keep meaning to try for some kind of horizontal promotion or something… what i really like is woodworking but there isn’t a lot of money in that.” and shane is like “oh no shit you’re into woodworking? like you’ve got a home shop and everything?” and devon is like “yeah it’s a sweet little garage set up :) i actually started a website, just so i could show my family backin the states my stuff…”

until eventually ilya and gabby have exhausted their list of erotic maneuvers and the point where shane and or devon is meant to cut in has long since passed and ilya is like “ah. please excuse me i should… go find my husband…” and gabby is like “…yeah me too….” and then they find shane and devon not even paying any fucking attention huddled by a wall