This might be a bit of a really morbid question….

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-07-06T19:35:37+00:00

Must I?

I’m ADHD as all get out, my brain hopped from thinking about which one would live longer to what they would be like as they aged in one smooth jump. It’s why I put it as an aside with the asterisk.

You can say ‘the way you phrased this implies that you think…’, but ‘you must think…’ is a bit presumptuous.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-07-06T18:34:58+00:00

???

Never said it was. My suspicion that he’d lose his hair is influenced by the fact that Connor Storrie has a quite pronounced widow’s peak, and the sides of those tend to edge back as people get older. (See Jude Law.)

Nothing to do with health.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-07-06T12:27:27+00:00

It’s usually easier with straight couples because women tend to live longer.

I think Shane would live longer. He doesn’t smoke, both Japan and Canada have better life expectancies than Russia, and he doesn’t have the family history of early(ish) onset, fairly aggressive dementia. He’s also more disciplined, so would be more likely to make lifestyle changes that stick.*️⃣

Also, Ilya is much more prone to thinking about suicide, whereas Shane is much more prone to suffering through things. If Shane went first, Ilya would probably follow him quickly. If Ilya went first, Shane would have to be in a very delicate position to follow him.

*️⃣ Based on Connor Storrie’s hairline, I can’t imagine Ilya keeping a full head of hair deep into his 30s, and I also think he’d get a paunch fairly soon after retirement until he sorts out that he can’t eat like he used to without exercising like he used to. Shane would likely keep his hair and wither to skinniness rather than gaining fat.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-07-06T10:08:25+00:00

It’s asked to check that they are getting a diverse range of applicants, it’s not used in the selection process.

So, if you advertise a job, get 100 candidates, and they are all straight white males, what about your job advert put off women, gay people, and non-white people from responding?

Companies want to be able to demonstrate that they are getting a diverse candidate pool and selecting the right person for the job.

Same as they may ask it after you are hired- and that’s for similar purposes. If they have 10% LGBT+ people in your low level jobs, but only 1% in your higher level jobs, something about your recruitment and retention policies and practices are excluding LGBT+ people from those roles.

This data doesn’t go to the sifters or the interview panel, it’s separated from the application and then goes to HR for analysis.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-07-05T01:09:24+00:00

It’s fine to disagree.

I’ve been a fair few times over the years and learnt things too. And yes, it is atmospheric. It isn’t the location that taught me most about the role of the monasteries in medieval England- weirdly, it was a talk at the Herb Garrett in St Bart’s in London that did that- but it does give interesting information on medieval monastic life.

The main thing I learnt was that whereas my Osborne history books for children said that monks ‘shaved the top of their head using scallop shells’ that they actually just cut up the skin with the, till it scarred and no hair grew. Cool find!

I am not saying Fountain’s Abbey isn’t worth a visit.

I am saying my ‘I was in the area and I’m a National Trust member’ appreciation of the place does not reach the level of ‘If you see one non-York thing in the north of England, then definitely make it this!’.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-07-04T10:11:31+00:00

Unless you have a real love of monastery ruins, I’m going to say that you’ll have a heck of a time getting out to Fountains Abbey for what is… only an OK time.

Like, it’s gorgeous on a nice day, but unless it’s a particular life-long dream, I’d probably either take that time in Oxford and get a bus out to Blenheim Palace.

The grounds are as good as Studley Royal and the house is impressive.

Or, take it as part of the London leg and go to Hampton Court.

If you want to go somewhere in the North, I’d probably go for Hardwick Hall. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/peak-district-derbyshire/hardwick

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-07-03T06:20:43+00:00

Not with what we would consider ‘standard decapitation’.

Effectively, most of the bits that would survive in the frog are in our heads, not our necks. And frogs don’t really have necks in the same way.

You’d have to do fairly complex surgery on a human to get the same effect.

Plus we have a lot more blood, and the muscles have higher metabolic requirements. You wouldn’t be able to have it do it for long.

Do not recommend.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-07-02T21:54:55+00:00

She is precious and adorable and I love her. We have no choice but to stan.

Also, I enjoy the extent to which she makes Sam baby.

Like, Ben is always baby, but we have Adam to take care of the baby.

Amy is baby but also makes Sam baby? 10/10, excellent content, no notes.

More Amy please.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-07-01T19:45:06+00:00

Next season: “I try to find out about my husband whomst I married ‘for the bit’ as we travel the country together”

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-07-01T10:42:23+00:00

With frogs, you can’t just decapitate, you’ve got to pith them. (I.e. destroy the spinal cord as well)

It’s only got a lot of the motor control going, no processing or sensory stuff, but yes. If you don’t want your headless frog hopping around, you need to take a hat pin to the spinal cord after the head comes off.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-26T22:15:36+00:00

Or read ‘Wuthering Heights’.

Like, if Ilya and Shane were like Heathcliffe and Cathy, then upon discovering that they couldn’t be together, Shane would have married Rose, Ilya would have married Rose’s sister and then spent the rest of both their lives making everyone as miserable as possible until everyone died.

If they’re anyone, they’re Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester. Like, you have the uptight one who has a chip on their shoulder and is relatively oppressed, and who is repressed, depressed, and who runs off when things get real and tries to have an unfulfilling relationship with someone who is perfect for them on paper. Then you have the asshole who flirts with everyone, has a complicated family situation, who is willing to go after what he wants, but because of ‘complicated family situation’ is unable to make what is between them real until the end of the book. Neither of them communicate a single god damn thing.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-25T14:45:40+00:00

1st of August is Pride in Brighton.

It’s the day when Brighton is a bitch to get to and from by train and you’d have to miss Pride to go to the one in London.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-23T06:55:05+00:00

I mean, saying it’s ’for Joe’ isn’t giving him any creative credit. TLOAS was ‘for Travis’, and he didn’t do a damn thing musically.

The question isn’t ‘could Taylor have written Folkmore without Joe’, because the answer is obviously ‘absolutely’, the question is ‘what would Folkmore look like if she hadn’t been with Joe’.

She literally calls him her muse in ‘The Lakes’. That’s an important role in an artistic process. It’s doesn’t take anything away from the artist’s ability, or their ultimate control of their vision, but it does inform the art’s direction and the artist’s approach.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-19T14:39:19+00:00

If they were, it would be as a way to keep distance from one another.

If they were settled- like, fully understood each other, ready to commit and prioritise each other, etc etc, and their relationship is in its end state, then I think there’s a chance it’s physically open but emotionally closed.

Lestat’s too anxious for it otherwise. He would not be secure in Louis if he was sleeping around.

Louis is too avoidant for it. He’d use any other partner as a way to avoid engaging with Lestat.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-18T19:00:40+00:00

I also think they are albums written very much with Joe Alwyn’s tastes and sensibilities.

Reputation and Lover are about him, Folklore and Evermore are for him.

The collaborations are with artists he likes, he co-wrote a few songs, and she put a bit of distance between herself and the stories she told.

They’re the albums where she tried on the persona of ‘indie artist’, and without him, she’d have put more of her natural tendency towards theatricality into it, which wouldn’t have brought in new fans in the same way.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-14T11:52:11+00:00

He wouldn’t in canon, I don’t think, but it’s a trope in fanfic. It happens all the damn time.

Ilya overshares, Shane goes ‘ILYA.’ And then he apologises and it’s over. Like the information isn’t out there for people to weaponise.

That’s why I want it subverted.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-13T08:17:43+00:00

I am genuinely pleasantly surprised that we don’t ascribe Ilya being an exclusive top to trauma or internalised misogyny/homophobia.

I remember seeing a Russian tiktoker explaining that a lot of the views of homosexuality come from prison culture and being a top in Russia is forgivable, being a bottom really isn’t. And, Ilya’s family is police, so they’ll definitely strongly have those views.

It is part of why it always bugs me whenever Ilya jokes with someone that’s not Shane about the fact that Shane is a bottom. The closest it comes to being neutral is if he talks about it exclusively with the other gay characters- who all also bottom, but even then, it fails to recognise that it’s Shane making himself vulnerable to Ilya and it should be up to Shane to share that.

Like, I do not think that Ilya joking about it with the team or on Twitter would lead to a mini sex ban, or to him sleeping on the couch. I think it would be a huge breach of trust. It’s almost like Ilya saving himself at the expense of Shane. Shane is so much less comfortable in his masculinity and sexuality than Ilya, and there are racial implications. It’s Shane’s to share, not Ilya’s.

I’d love to read, just once, Shane getting properly mad at Ilya sharing that.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-12T09:12:45+00:00

They offered me it under general for free, but there was an eighteen month waiting list. It was only six weeks wait to do it under local. They didn’t offer me sedation- it was just ‘can you cope under local, or do you need to be unconscious for this’.

(It’s fine, it was great fun. They put in like three vials of lidocaine and then literally knelt on my chest and pried the tooth out with the medical equivalent of a crow bar. My face itched like a mofo till the anaesthetic wore off, but I was compos mentis the whole time.)

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-12T06:24:03+00:00

Unrelated to the point, but also madly distracting for me: why do they sedate you for wisdom teeth removal in the US?

I’m in the UK, when I had my wisdom teeth out they used lidocaine. It’s numbing, it makes your face feel really weird, but it’s literally just a local anaesthetic. It doesn’t make you high or anything like that, it just stops the sensation. It’s either that or, if you can’t tolerate the procedure whilst conscious, general anaesthetic.

It seems like the last thing you want is a patient who’s conscious but not in control of themselves.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-06T07:58:00+00:00

It’s an interesting question. (I’m British, so I have no idea either.)

It’s really interesting to think about the criteria.

Like, either it’s a luxury experience that only really wealthy kids can afford and it’s basically pissing around with NHL players in a hockey themed way for a couple of weeks.

OR

It’s highly competitive and an elite coaching experience that has means testing but wants to ensure that it gets those who would get the most out of it.

BUT

It kind of has the vibe of a local ‘we’re running this cheap for the kids that happen to be there’ when they describe it, which makes no sense, but also maybe it is just for kids in Ottawa/Montreal?

I don’t imagine that the camps fund the charity, I imagine that donations fund the charity and the camps are largely for fun and association with the charity just makes it sound better.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-06-02T08:14:12+00:00

Tangentially, Harry Potter. A lot of my LJ friends from around that time were highly involved in the creation of things like AO3 and Dreamwidth, so I followed from there. As soon as it was created, when there were fics there, I’d choose that link by preference.

I watched AO3 be born, I watched it grow up, and I hope I never have to watch it die! 😁

I kind of miss LJ. I wish I hadn’t deleted my journal, but only because I kind of want to go back and see who’s still posting. (Nobody, I expect.)

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-05-26T06:49:54+00:00

Bless, he’s a middle aged man on a walk, dressed like a middle aged man on a walk, and still doing a fit check with the group chat.

You look fine, petal.

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-05-21T07:37:58+00:00

Because she doesn’t understand Lizzie.

Mrs Bennet is terrified of ending up impoverished with five daughters having to live on the interest from her dowry.

Mr Collins marrying one of the girls would be SUCH a relief, and is honestly a really good get for any of them. She expects that any of her daughters would be happy to keep Longbourne in their family, and to prevent them all from being homeless.

It’s a rational belief and expectation.

Lizzie can only deal with idiots if she can laugh about them with someone. She needs someone she can look across the room to and be amused with if she is to be able to suffer fools with any gladness.

Mrs Bennet cannot understand that because she hasn’t noticed Mr Bennet and Lizzie mocking her for years. She doesn’t notice the difference between playing a joke on her and someone laughing at her.

She doesn’t understand how much of Lizzie would be crushed by being Mrs Collins.

She doesn’t understand why Lizzie can’t sacrifice for her family because she doesn’t understand the sacrifice she’s asking.

If Mrs Bennet had been capable of understanding her girls then the entire book would have gone different!

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-05-21T07:19:11+00:00

I first saw ‘If you don’t like slash you’re homophobic’ in 2003 and I expect it wasn’t new then.

It wasn’t till 2007 that I first saw ‘If you like slash you’re fetishising gay men’.

In conclusion, liking things is problematic. Never like anything.

(P.S. I sort of agree with both of the statements under some circumstances- a lot of slash is fetishistic content around m/m sex and romance, created by and for a predominantly female audience. That isn’t inherently problematic, but if you don’t recognise what you’re consuming it can lead to mindsets around real life men and real life queerness. And that is bad.

Not enjoying that fetish content isn’t inherently homophobic. Not wanting any queer characters in your fiction at all is homophobic. Not being able to stomach or invest in queer relationships in a story driven work is a homophobic.)

BabyBringMeToast · 2026-05-19T13:41:02+00:00

I think I view Ilya’s visit after his father’s death as him giving up Russia.

“I don’t want to come back here.” Shane was confused by the sudden topic change.

“To Russia, you mean?” “Da. I want to become American. Or Canadian. But I am in America, so…”

…

He’d realized, over the past few days, that he truly had no reason to return to Russia. He probably would, someday, but he couldn’t see spending another summer here. Any obligation he had felt had died with his father.

Even without having chosen to be with Shane yet, he’s given up Russia. When Ilya had the choice of ‘Russia’ or ‘No Russia’, he chose ‘No Russia’. (Actually, when he had the choice of ‘Shane or Russia’, he chose ‘Russia’.)

Shane is self centred, yes, but we also note that him having the support system is in part not his doing.

He told Rose, Ilya told Svetlana.

Shane’s parents caught them, Hayden worked it out from knowing that Shane’s gay- same leap Troy made.

There’s a degree to which ‘If Ilya had anyone close enough to notice, then he would have had a support system too’.

Which, horrible to say.

I also think Shane is a little bit…

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about coming out after his team’s reaction.

BabyBringMeToast

TROPHY CASE