A bar across town had a Heated Rivalry trivia contest tonight. So, of course I headed out. I arrived later that I'd hoped. I grabbed dinner on the way and that took too long because they didn't realize that soybeans have soy in them. So, my food had to get remade.

Anyway, by the time I got there the venue was at capacity, so I had to turn around and go home. I should have gone like an hour earlier and just had a protein bar for dinner. No bar full of fans for me.

So, I went home and turned on the Kraken game, just in time to hear the announcers talking about a Melanson goal? Babygirl got his first NHL goal? And I just barely missed seeing it live?

It was a good game, even if I missed the first part.

* I am a big fan of shows being weekly. I powered through Stranger Things like it was my job yesterday to avoid being more spoiled. I want media that respects my time. It's also better for fandom.

Interestingly, in his second What Chaos interview Jacob Tierney said it's better for him as a creator. He can better tell what is hitting and what is not when the shows come out weekly. The feedback he wants to polish his craft doesn't exist in the binge model.

* Fandom has had top/bottom discourse forever. 99% of it is bad faith. First off all, yes, some gay people *do* identify as tops and bottoms. It was more common in the 80s and 90s, but it's still a thing that happens and is part of North American gay culture. (And elsewhere, but I am talking about NA here) Also, tagging a character as a top or bottom in a fic isn't a big fucking deal, it's telling people what type of smut to expect.

So, anyway, neither Shane or Ilya have top or bottom as part of their identity, but they have clear roles sexually. When the books were adapted by a gay man he didn't soften that, he leaned into it. I am shattered that my mind isn't dirty enough to have picked up on team logos being either phallic or.... peach-tastic. He assigned whole teams as tops and bottoms. Boston and Dallas? Tops. Montreal and San Jose San Francisco? Bottoms.

He's not being serious. It's a joke, a joke that works because, yes, tops and bottoms are things in NA-based gay culture. Even though, yes, a significant percentage of gay men don't actually engage in that.

It's a really bad sign of how much long-term fannish discourse has gotten into my head that seeing a gay man divide the entire NHL into tops and bottoms as a joke feels so good. I've been hearing people scream online that the concept of tops and bottoms doesn't exist outside of women fetishizing gay men, but that bullshit take only works online. There is a section of people in fandom who spend all day online and post a lot who really need to crack a window. I've known multiple gay men who ID this way, and it's usually a bit tongue in cheek. But yeah, me tagging who tops in a fic is not that big of a fucking deal, people need to settle down.

* Related to my last point about the section of online fandom that needs to crack a window... Before Heated Rivalry came out there was a creator whose deep dives on the books were the top google and youtube search results. He's had to private those videos and most of his content because when the show blew up the most detached-from-reality online discourses latched onto his videos and spewed comments that don't even make sense. It's just concentrated, fermented discourse that some people have made their entire personality. They were telling him his experiences and identity as a gay man weren't valid over and over again to the point where he mostly erased his entire foray into content creation because he couldn't handle the sheer volume of people saying the same things to him over and over.