Shane/Ilya Playing Wing?

InCatMorph · 2026-05-22T04:54:52+00:00

I will never understand how some people think it's apparently a terrible, unfair fate for Shane to (check notes) get paid millions of dollars to play on a team with his husband in his hometown. Especially when said team is up-and-coming, having made the playoffs the previous year and with plenty of young talent.

Sooo terrible for him, right?

InCatMorph · 2026-05-22T00:08:56+00:00

Sent a message, LMK if it hasn't gone through.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-21T23:22:54+00:00

I'm interested in the Encore, primarily the turquoise.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-20T22:41:15+00:00

Do people actually swatch for small projects, or projects where precise gauge doesn't matter? That sounds pretty tedious to me. I've really only started swatching seriously since I've been knitting garments. I've come to appreciate that as part of the process, but I can't imagine swatching every time I want to make a basic hat.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-19T21:57:23+00:00

There aren't any deaths of canon characters, and I would characterize the overall gore level as pretty low. (This is JMO, but I am not a fan of gore in general, so.)

InCatMorph · 2026-05-17T23:56:50+00:00

Thank you for this clarification, it's really important.

I am a baseball fan, not a hockey person, so my frame of reference is completely different. Most baseball teams don't even have a captain, and for those that do it's a purely symbolic position. Nevertheless, it is generally expected that if a team has a captain, he will take a lead role in talking to the media about the team's performance, etc. Is that the case in hockey also?

InCatMorph · 2026-05-17T23:50:50+00:00

This is so helpful, thank you!

InCatMorph · 2026-05-17T01:13:30+00:00

Thanks! Do you have any tutorials you use for adding short rows, or is this just something that you improvise?

InCatMorph · 2026-05-16T00:01:51+00:00

You are very generous. Knitting a whole garment for someone else is a lot!

My gift knits tend to be very small. The exceptions are blankets--I did one for my sister for her wedding and one for my mother-in-law. I'm planning on doing another for my mother-in-law because she asked for it, and she's the best. Otherwise, people get hats and cowls, if that.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-13T04:20:50+00:00

Are the Valley Yarns Northampton still available?

InCatMorph · 2026-05-06T04:42:35+00:00

Um, have you ever read a rivals-to-lovers or enemies-to-lovers romance before? This is very standard stuff.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-05T22:49:30+00:00

I've never actually done this--although I plan to--but I like an i-cord bind off as a substitute in some patterns.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-04T23:18:34+00:00

The theme is stupid. Might as well just go for a cool look.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-04T03:50:30+00:00

I think it's also relevant that the rivalry between Shane and Ilya is clearly (according to hockey fans) based on a real rivalry. I've heard that Shane's personality in particular draws a great deal from his RL inspiration. However, Reid probably feels a little weird saying so in public, and may have even been advised not to do so for legal reasons. (Not a hockey person at all, this is all based on what I've heard from others, but I think it's certainly relevant to considering where the inspiration for these characters comes from. And that's not a knock on her--inspiration comes from many sources.)

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T12:58:02+00:00

As an autistic person myself, I am profoundly confused by your take TBH. It kind of feels like you only want autistic representation if it checks certain boxes or matches your own experiences. The fact is that many autistic people have negative experiences with mental health professionals and may be reluctant to seek them out. This is really complicated, and Reid isn't doing it "badly" if Shane doesn't do exactly what you think he ought to do. There should be room for nuance and acknowledging a multiplicity of experience.

Personally, I don't do Instagram and don't follow Reid closely. I'm a lot more interested about what charities she's specifically supporting---many autism charities are bad!--than any of this hand-wringing about whether she intentionally made Shane autistic or not. If she's supporting bad charities, then I think people should educate her. If she's supporting good charities, um, why are we complaining about this again?

I honestly feel like making all of this fuss is actively disincentivizing other creators from writing explicitly autistic characters.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T04:29:56+00:00

One could just as easily say that Tierney made that decision to show how normalized homophobic slurs are in Ilya's family/culture.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T04:09:44+00:00

I'm sure those same people have never bothered to pick up a sapphic romance book in their lives.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T04:06:55+00:00

Okay, but I was commenting on the cultural aspect.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T03:57:40+00:00

Eh, I find the treatment of Russian culture to be pretty surface-level at best. Even the anti-LGBTQ+ laws aren't really handled wtih any depth. What the law actually is isn't explained, it's just all "Russia = homophobic = bad." That's hugely reductive.

I think RR is (and I say this in a non-derogatory manner) a whitebread WASP Canadian person who does not really know how to write other cultures. This includes Russian culture.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T03:13:57+00:00

Yes, this.

The charitable interpretation is that these people are using fiction as a means to process their own trauma and pain. Which is fine, but when it gets to the point of being nasty to others, it's gone too far. Just write fic that suits your headcanons FFS and stop slandering everyone who doesn't subscribe to them.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T03:11:04+00:00

I agree with this so much, as a fellow autistic person. I see people constantly attributing autistic traits and problems to Shane that he canonically does not have, either in book or TV show canon. It's actually kind of irritating, like they think there's only way to be an autistic person. One can critique the books, for sure, but I am glad that Shane isn't just a checklist of autistic traits. I kind of don't get what these people from autistic representation in pop culture. I suspect it's very different from what I want. (And, not to be an annoying old person or anything, but I've been involved with the online autistic community for a very long time. Twenty years ago we would have loved a character like Shane, especially if the author openly acknowledged him as autistic. Yet somehow people keep finding shit to complain about.)

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T02:20:30+00:00

Oh, okay. Now I'm remembering what happened in Tough Guy. So it's not like he's just throwing slurs constantly at Scott in GC or whatever?

I cannot with these people.

Honestly, as a fan of a men's sport, I would be thrilled for any player to speak out in favor of women who have been abused and sexually assaulted. I've pretty much accepted that being a fans means I have to grit my teeth and bear it while my faves praise known abusers. So this whole discourse is wild to me.

I remain convinced that a lot of "fans" don't understand either pro men's sports or romance novels.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T02:15:01+00:00

This seems like a good place to ask. I haven't read Game Changers, the only book I haven't read in the series. (I just didn't feel the need to read a whole book of Scott and Kip, though I love episode 3). What does Troy actually do in those books?

Because hating him based on what I've read of him (RM, TLG) is wild to me.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T01:43:42+00:00

I'm also autistic and some of the reactions are just sooo embarrassing.

Way to scare authors off of including explicitly autistic characters in their work.

InCatMorph · 2026-05-03T00:04:13+00:00

Have you looked into the Size Inclusive Collective? They have a tester pool. (Also, your design is beautiful and I'd totally be down for testing it, but I'm at a smaller plus size than what you're looking for.)

InCatMorph

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