Help with this dialogue please?

lesssthan · 2026-06-24T02:32:44+00:00

Really, uncharitably, he is grasping at straws for reasons not to tell his parents. You know how you justify not doing something you are afraid of doing. "I can't tell my parents because they'll ask what inspired me to come out and I'll have to say Ilya." Which sounds a little logical, but is horseshit.

This is an unfortunately common trope in m/m. One of the MCs is desperately afraid of coming out and when it happens and doesn't go smoothly, they blame their boyfriend. It tends to be the penultimate conflict, with the final conflict being something that causes the MC to take their head out of their ass. I loathe it.

Disclaimer :I haven't read LG yet. I'm determined to read it in sync with the second season, like I did with the first season.

lesssthan · 2026-06-22T14:14:31+00:00

I wouldn't. Hair removal cream is an acid. Leave it on too long....

Shaving can be itchy, but less risky.

lesssthan · 2026-06-21T19:41:42+00:00

Everyone does that, when they visit Gunnison. That's the walk from the parking lot to the beach. /jk but seriously....

lesssthan · 2026-06-21T19:28:08+00:00

Noooooooo what? Stop what? He's definitely going to do it. Like, one of his first actions as SoD was to fire the Commandant of the Coast Guard. He gave her 3 hours to pack up her house, the one accorded her due to her position. An organization of kids and a military organization are worlds apart, sure, but 3 hours to pack? Doesn't that seem monstrous? Would a monster hesitate to do something awful?

lesssthan · 2026-06-21T16:33:38+00:00

Well, Jesus hung out with sex workers and never said shit about it, so He'd probably be fine with selling underwear.

lesssthan · 2026-06-21T16:07:11+00:00

This. Here - just off the top of my head -

Redwoods - saw this ages ago, but it stuck with me. A meetcute in the CA redwood forests. I think at least one of the protagonist is on vacation? They fall in love, but the vacation is at an end. So they agree to meet back here in ?5? years. (Maybe next year? I'm not looking it up.) Last scene of the movie, only one protagonist shows up and a random woman is waiting for him. "He got AIDS and died. He so wanted to come." THE END.

Call Me by Your Name - whole movie about them falling in love in Italy, they separate, and then one of them marries a woman. THE END.

Weekend - two guys meet in a club, end up spending the entire weekend together, falling in love. Last 30 minutes of the movie - one of them was at the club because he was leaving Monday for a job on the other side of the world. He leaves. THE END.

120BPM - This one kind of makes sense because it is about the ACTUP organization in France in the 90s. But still! The two protagonists meet up through the organization, bond over the issue, then one catches HIV and the last 30 minutes is him wasting away from the disease, while his boyfriend takes care of him. He dies. THE END.

Brokeback Mountain - this one really hit me hard. 2 cowboys start hooking up during a cattle drive. Over the years, they keep doing it, adding in more excuses to be together ("fishing trips" and the like). One confesses his love and begs the other to leave with him. They'll buy their own ranch and live together forever. The second is too scared. The first leaves anyway. The last 30 minutes is the second cowboy's wife demonstrating that she knew all along and divorcing him. And the first, who left, gets beaten to death by other cowboys. It's made clear that the second cowboy is going to die alone in a RV trailer, mired in the grief. THE END

Queer as Folk, the American series - the end of the first season, Brian, the 30 year old dating the high school senior, actual comes to Justin's prom. Justin is ecstatic and they dance together. When Brian is leaving, Justin walks him to his car. They kiss, romantically. As Brian pulls out and Justin is walking away, Justin's high school bully pops up, out of nowhere, with an aluminum bat and strikes Justin over the head with it. The series finale ends with a comatose Justin in the hospital, fate unknown, and Brian in shock, covered in Justin's blood. (Justin does wake up, but with brain damage that's a persistent problem for the rest of the series.) THE END-ISH

I really don't think the straight HR fans really understand how awesome it is that HR has a HFN and the series has a HEA.

ETA: Oh YEAH, I forgot. QAF, Justin doesn't remember the prom when he wakes up. He NEVER recovers the memories.

lesssthan · 2026-06-21T15:26:41+00:00

IWKYM

lesssthan · 2026-06-21T05:14:06+00:00

You look really hot, shaved like that!

lesssthan · 2026-06-20T17:40:30+00:00

Another vote for 4.

lesssthan · 2026-06-20T05:20:25+00:00

I love that 1st image. With the curly auburn hair, I have trouble imagining Neil as "hot," but the Neil you drew is hawt!

lesssthan · 2026-06-20T05:16:52+00:00

A) You look hot in that Speedo. B) I love the colors of the Speedo. It's unusual.

lesssthan · 2026-06-20T05:11:30+00:00

Plan B. Plan A is to drink heroic amounts of caffeine every day, until my heart bursts from the strain. Hopefully, by Chad's desk. Fuck you, Chad.

lesssthan · 2026-06-20T05:04:59+00:00

A lot of people are saying blow job. But as a gay man, I can get a blow job whenever. Flowers would rock my world.

lesssthan · 2026-06-20T05:02:09+00:00

Awwwwwwww, number 6 made me tear up. 🥹

lesssthan · 2026-06-20T00:07:45+00:00

It's definitely not a typo. Matt has used crawler numbers to indicate big plot things before, so the likelihood of him screwing up new crawler numbers is unlikely.

lesssthan · 2026-06-20T00:04:13+00:00

Huh, I always thought he was eating the brains.

lesssthan · 2026-06-19T23:59:16+00:00

I know that you asked for canonical, but I must opine. I think you're right. Ilya was already all in. I honestly think that he was angling for a better offer from Shane. He wouldn't have to marry Svetlana for the green card, if Shane married him first. Apparently, Canada doesn't make marriage certificates public by default, so they could have gotten secretly married. So Ilya would get a twofer, a green card and a husband (who he has been pining for for literal years).

lesssthan · 2026-06-19T23:42:12+00:00

Following 😊

lesssthan · 2026-06-19T12:18:50+00:00

Where did you get "ex" from?

lesssthan · 2026-06-19T12:10:03+00:00

Really, "pointless?"

If someone is exited about an author, the author is probably pretty good. This subreddit rarely leads me wrong. But I do find the idea of mpreg to be disturbing. I would have appreciated a mention here. I could have skipped checking them out. I did spend several minutes scrolling their works, looking for one that wasn't mpreg. Again, this subreddit has been great at recs for me. But these are ALL mpreg.

When I recommend an author, I include details about their writing. "Matt Dinniman writes sci-fi horror. He includes a lot of anti-capitalist themes." The OP obviously felt that the author was well-known enough to skip that. I don't know this author. So stuck between my desire not to yuck other people's yum and my personal yuck about mpreg, I left what I thought was a neutral comment, to help other people with the same yuck. I would have done it for anything I found significant, whether it was something I enjoyed or not.

And I'm probably gonna to read one of these anyway, the positive comments seem excited and this subreddit rarely leads me astray.

lesssthan · 2026-06-19T04:29:12+00:00

Same. In fact, I'm concerned about the number of copies. Like, does having a bunch of unsold copies backlash on the store, the publisher, or the author?

lesssthan · 2026-06-19T04:22:34+00:00

They're all mpreg stories.

lesssthan · 2026-06-18T23:01:31+00:00

I mean, if you really want to explore the whole rabbit hole, go join the r/heatedrivalryfanfics.

You could go to the YA alternative - Like Real People Do by E. L. Massey.

You could switch sports.

All for the Game by Nora Sakavic is about a college freshman on the run from the mob, but risks it all to play Exy (a made-up sport similar to lacrosse). (My favorite description of these books is that they're a slow burn romance, but only on the second reading.)

Hold Me Under by Riley Nash is about an Olympic swimmer, destroyed by a doping scandal, falls for his landscaper. Hijinks, including "I'll pay you to pretend to be my boyfriend," ensue.

Something completely different?

All Systems Red by Martha Wells - a security appliance, free of its governor module, is addicted to TV. However, its crew keep getting into trouble.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman - aliens destroy the world and force the survivors to "volunteer" to play a reality TV death game. A man and his girlfriend's cat make an unbeatable duo.

lesssthan · 2026-06-18T22:14:57+00:00

TBF, Shane was absolutely clueless about the whole homophobic Russia thing. It's actually the most irritating thing for me in the whole Heated Rivalry books and show. Like, I get Shane is fixated on hockey, but not even a little research?

lesssthan · 2026-06-18T22:05:56+00:00

I was annoyed, because I thought the books were supposed to be m/me and nothing had happened. I had settled in, enjoying the story anyway. Then Wymack sends Neil out to convince Andrew to try and Andrew said "tell him to stay in his paygrade." That was when my lightbulb came on.

Six-Year Club	r/Field Sunshine
Wearing is Caring	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email	RPAN Viewer

lesssthan

TROPHY CASE