Jan. 4th, 2026

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* 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.
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Just in case you were wondering how much early-internet-culture brainrot I have, I got stupidly excited to see that the 11+8 bridge is still hungry:

olivermoss: (Default)
ESPN did an amazing podcast on Hobey Baker, an early hockey star who was queer. The research is really well done and the problems of researching historical queer figures is well handled.

Also, I a tumblr post that is very short, but a primer on looking into queer hockey. Basically, a quick overview of who Hobey Baker, Brock McGillis and Luke Prokop are. It's a starting point for people wanting to look into things.

I wrote it a while back, if I was writing it now I'd include Brendan Burke who did not play pro hockey and died young in a car accident. His father is Brian Burke was President of the Maple Leafs at the time and helped launch the You Can Play initiative in honor of his son, and did other things aimed at ending homophobia in the sport. He is now the Executive Director of the PWHL (top level women's league currently growing at a rapid pace in the US. Go Torrent! No, I mean, Torrent is the name of a team, you can watch the games on youtube. No need to torrent.)

Anyway, the PWHL has lots of lesbians, and one of the Seattle goalies is non-binary. There's going to be TWO expansion drafts this summer so IDK if we can keep them, we'll see. After the next expansion draft they aren't doing any new teams for a whole so we wont have players constantly jumbled around. It looks like Dallas and Denver are getting the last two teams. It's not confirmed, but most people are assuming those are the places.

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Oliver Moss

January 2026

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