Genius, or Insanity?

shelly, 30s. she/her or they/them. nonprofit professional. furious fic-writer, disabled Jew, too many feelings. not organized enough for a fandom blog. on ao3 @shellybelle. ask me anything!

[voydhymn]

having many trinkets and books is so cool and fun until you realize you have to dust them

[kaijuerotica]

not now, kitten, daddy is cyberbullying harry potter fans

[iwrotemrtambourineman]

Thinking about your iconic post about how hollanovs Biggest Fight is about Ilya coming to terms with the ways his mother's mental illness put a lot of undue pressure on him as a child that he has yet to come to terms with because of how he martyred her after her suicide,,, thinking about it all the time actually

I do believe in my heart of hearts that that fight is less of a fight and more of an ilya screaming match where shane makes the “you shouldn’t have had to do that” comment and ilya is like up and yelling, “how fucking dare you, hollander!” and he’s not even processing like half the things that are coming out of his mouth, he’s just getting like flashes of “i was being a good son” and “my father” and “their bedroom was across from mine” and Shane’s up too going, “what the fuck, i’m on your side? why are you yelling at me?” and ilya is just like “i don’t know!” and storms out back and smokes to calm down and waits for shane to come out and bring him back inside.

but yes ilya definitely views his mother as a saint and does not want to look at how her depression and mania and abuse at the hands of his father affected him because that would be so selfish of him, and he’s not selfish. He’s a good son. He wasn’t the one suffering, she was! He knows he wasn’t suffering because she was suffering so much that she killed herself. He knows she killed herself because he found her. Thank god he found her, that’s what a good son would do. He’s just playing the role of a good son. He didn’t suffer, because she was the one suffering. Etc. Etc. Etc.

[shanerozanov]

heated rivalry + text posts // part four.

[hollanovstrophyroom]

Ilya's Depression

a breastplate made of silver linings by Anonymous (2,932 words, rated T)

“Be careful,” Shane frets, one hand hovering over Ilya’s shoulder. “It’s icy, and I don’t want to be a widower.”

“Oh, we’d have to be much higher than this for the fall to kill me,” Ilya says, gaze still fixed on the cool black skyline. “At least seven stories.”

It’s not until much later, as the waitress is clearing the dishes from dinner, that Yuna finds herself wondering why Ilya knows exactly how high a fall needs to be in order to kill him. 

Or: Yuna learns about Ilya's past bit by bit over the years.

bubblewrap me, baby by Anonymous (3,619 words, rated M)

Ilya is sipping a cappuccino and watching Shane do very perverted yoga when he realizes that he doesn’t want to die.

It’s a dumb series of thoughts. He sees Shane bend over, neatly folding himself into a hunchback as his hands flatten by his feet, and Ilya thinks, I bet he’s going to love it when we’re old and grey and he can outrace me with my stupid hip replacement. And then he realizes that not only does he anticipate being old and grey enough to need a hip replacement, but that he actually wants to get there.

Or: the existential crisis that happens when you’ve been depressed your whole life and then realize, suddenly, in your thirties, that you’re happy enough with your life that you no longer want to die.

the art of long-term cohabitation by Anonymous (5,546 words, rated E)

“Sometimes, I wish he was a worse person,” Ilya admits one night, while he and Yuna are doing the dishes. Shane and Ilya had come over for chicken parmesan, and it had been a lovely dinner, right up until David, clearing the plates, mentioned that he had met a guy at the store the other day who was a big fan of Shane’s, had a kid who idolized him.

David asked if Shane could sign a piece of merchandise for him, maybe record a video. Shane said yes, because he had a rule, about doing things for child fans. Now, Shane was off shooting a video while Ilya did the dishes, and Ilya already knew the way it would require Shane to drag his public face up from the depths of his stomach, the work it would take him to shed it afterwards, the way it would taint this evening.

contingency plans by @anincompletelist (8,339 words, rated T)

Shane's eyes squeeze closed again. “We had reason to put rules in place. Protocol. If ever—if it got to a place where, if he was ever feeling like he might—"

Hayden’s body understands before his mind catches up. His blood runs cold for a second, stuck on the scrunch of Shane’s face, the clench of his fist, how desperate he’d been to see Rozanov—Ilya—just now. To make sure that he was okay. Here, in person.

Not hurt. Alive.

“Oh,” Hayden hears himself say distantly. “Oh, fuck, Shane.”

or, Ilya needs a place to go, and Hayden's happens to be the closest. It turns out to be a good thing.

the suicidal duckling by Anonymous (9,704 words, rated E)

Ilya had thought it was dumb, when Galina suggested it. A code word for when his mental health was bad—he and Shane didn’t even have a code word for sex, and Ilya was regularly tying Shane to the bed and slapping his ass until it was as red as a tomato.

“Is there a reason you’re calling me?” Shane asks now, voice echoey over the phone. “Or is this part of your strategy to win our argument?”

Ilya swallows hard. “Constantinople,” he says.

Or: Ilya goes through a rough patch.

knockout by @penandinkprincess (10,060 words, rated T)

“That’s not-” Shane starts, but he stops himself. Ilya tilts his head slightly in question, but Shane bites the inside of his cheek and then shakes his head slightly, cheeks flushing. “I do trust you,” Shane says.

“But not with your car?” Ilya asks. “You are afraid I will drive all the boring out of it?”

Shane rolls his eyes.

“It’s a good car-” He starts in another refrain of one of his favorite summer songs.

Ilya rolls them and pins his boyfriend under him before he has to hear about four wheel drive and gas mileage again.

There are far better uses for Shane’s mouth, after all.

(in which ilya learns that being a passenger in the car knocks shane tf out)

wait for a different ending by @garagepaperback (12,562 word, rated M)

Ilya goes to Moscow, and then he goes back home.

pain's like cold water (your brain just gets used to it) by @somniatic (13,047 words, rated T)

One morning, Ilya wakes up and he can't get out of bed. He knows he should be worried about this, but he can't quite find the energy.

(Ilya has a bad weekend. Shane is there to help.)

the weather of your youth by Anonymous (14,171 words, rated E)

"Sveta," he says, before she can greet him. "I think I'm about to do something very stupid."

"You're always doing something stupid," she laughs, her voice tinny over the speakerphone. "What is it this time?"

"I am in a staring contest with a bottle of pills," Ilya says. "And I think the pills might win."

Or: An alternate take on Ilya's mental health after moving to Ottawa, featuring the reality of long distance relationships, Ilya learning to captain a new team, and a series of game tapes made by Ilya's dead father.

The Axiom of Equality by kooksie (18,895 words, rated E)

Ilya hurts Shane.

It’s an accident, of course, but his mind goes to the only place it knows how afterwards: He deserves to hurt too.

a winner at heart by @ellisonwongparty (32,053 words, rated E)

Ilya laughs. He finds that once he starts, he can't stop. He laughs at the fact that he's in France with Shane Hollander. He laughs at the fact he's Shane Hollander's boyfriend. He laughs at the fact that he gave up Moscow for a better life, only to end up in fucking Ottawa. 

Ilya's dick stops working one month before he's supposed to leave for the South of France. 

continuity errors/tuesday again by Anonymous (32,873 words, rated M)

The first thing you should know about time loops is that they’re really fucking hard to break. The second thing is that you can never break one in such a way that it is incapable of returning.

The third thing you should know is that everyone around you has probably been stuck in a time loop at one point or another, and they made it out alive. This is only comforting if you’re a numbers guy, or if you’re the kind of guy who talks to others about how it feels to live the same day over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Shame if you’re not; the most important thing you should know about breaking a time loop is that it helps to tell someone you’re trapped in one in the first place.

[rainbow-femme]

I love confident smart competent Svetlana, but I do also need her to be a little bit pathetic and for a big part of her friendship with Ilya to be them lamenting how shit they are at relationships

Svetlana: RED ALERT

Svetlana: GENERATIONAL FUMBLE

Ilya: You asked about their favorite hockey team and then spent fifteen minutes roasting it didn’t you

Svetlana: I thought it was friendly banter and then he went to the bathroom and didn’t come back

Ilya: It’s not banter if you’re the only one talking and he’s sitting there silently weeping into his Bud Light

Svetlana: Remember when you told Jane how much you liked fucking me while trying to lock it down?

Ilya: 🖕😘

Svetlana: 🖕😘

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

if they're gonna remake The Princess Bride, it should open with a kid sick in bed scrolling on his phone. his grandpa arrives with a gift--it's a DVD player with a disc already inside. grandpa hooks it up to the TV and presses play. and we all just watch the original 1987 film again.

[mybloodstream-caffeine]

And what if I wanted a Yuna POV canon divergent fic where, by virtue of being Shane's momager and shepherding him around everywhere when he enters the MLH, she keeps bumping into her son's biggest rival, because of course the two shining stars of the hockey world would be invited to the same events.

And, look. Yuna has been around hockey culture a long time. She knows why Shane begged her not to drop him off too close to the rink in juniors so his teammates wouldn't catch a glimpse of her. She knows what half the insults tossed around on the ice are about. She's not an idiot. So when this cocky upstart kid starts approaching her at these shindigs, all adolescent swagger, thinking he's soo slick and subtle with whatever kind of mind game he's obviously playing with her son, she has half a mind to cut him off before he can even work up any steam.

“All this talk of Hollander, Hollander, Hollander but I did not know he had big sister" is the kid's opening line.

And she shouldn't laugh – that's obviously the reaction he's aiming for – but he's really selling it, is the thing; his performance deserves at least that much recognition.

“I'm his mother,” she says, playing along.

And oh, he's good – his sharp eyebrows immediately jump into his thick tangle of curls, mouth dropping open in shock that, for all intents and purposes, looks utterly sincere.

“But this cannot be true – you are much too young to have teenager, Miss Hollander.”

And God, this kid. He really is laying it on thick. “I think you'll find I definitely am old enough – and a son your age, no less” that last part she says a little pointedly. She can lay it on thick, too. “And it's Mrs Hollander, actually.”

And Rozanov's eyes are glittering, all mischief when he says, “Ah. Your husband is very lucky man," and no, that is quite enough of that.

And even though she shoos him away, he always comes to circle her skirts at every event they both attend, playing up the simpering flattery, and Yuna, despite herself, is reluctantly charmed. If this is what the kid is like at nineteen, she can't even begin to imagine him when he was younger - he must have gotten away with everything.

Honestly, she finds herself thinking, exasperated, every time she spots him approaching with that impish grin, where is this boy's mother?

And then she finds out. And suddenly, she's asking David if they can invite Rozanov out to lunch because, well, he's going to be in their son's life for a long time, it's good to build rapport with Shane's peers, even if they're competitors.

And that's how Yuna Hollander tucks Ilya Rozanov firmly under her wing long before she ever twigs that he's fucking her son on the dl.

[fuckthisshit-ugh]

please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

reblog. share. don't scroll past.

[caspercryptid]

The really unfortunate thing about mental health progress is that sometimes you realize you've made it in the form of "wow, I haven't felt this bad in a fucking while"

[caspercryptid]

On the one hand it's a bit of a pick me up in a dark place to know that this will pass because it has passed before on the other hand sometimes it isn't entirely a pleasant thought to go "wow, I used to feel like this all the time. That was pretty fucking bad. It's pretty bad right now too also."

[caspercryptid]

Someday your current baseline will be the sort of thing you consider A Really Bad Day. It does get better.

[mybloodstream-caffeine]

People are not ready to hear this take probably but I think a significant portion of Ilya's experiences with men have been with much older men even going back to his teenage in Russia days. And yes he was dominating them. Eighteen (or younger) year old Ilya Rozanov stepping on the dick and balls of an oligarch who made Ilya wear a blindfold while he brought him into his house but now that blindfold is wrapped around the oligarch's wrists as Ilya tells him he's useless and disgusting. And yeah Ilya means it. The daddy issues are issuing. Oligarch tries to give Ilya some hush money on his way out the door and Ilya drops a crispy (AMERICAN) bill on the floor and says he's nobody's fucking whore. He's thirty and married before he even starts to confront the fact that he was still being taken advantage of even when he was the one doing the ball-stepping. Massive meltdown in therapy and then he goes home and his husband comforts him by begging for his balls to be stepped on. Circle of life.

OhHh my godddd. 🫠🫠🫠🫠 Luckily I AM ready to hear and receive this!!!! It all comes back to Ilya and how risky sex was his one form of catharsis from his shitty home life, doesn't it? It all comes back to his passive suicidal ideation that made every experience that made him feel even remotely alive seem worth it. What does it matter if the risky sex he's having is with older American men in seedy bathrooms or in the velvet lined bedroom of some oligarch from the old country?

I'm picturing this all comes out after hollanov have a talk about their childhood crushes. Shane shares his revelation about crushing on his old coach in Juniors. And Ilya teases Shane and makes him blush and squirm and obviously they fuck about it, but then afterwards Ilya casually drops: "Did you fuck him?"

"Hm? Who?"

"Your coach."

And Shane sits up from where he's been lying next to Ilya in bed to look at him in the face, to see if he's serious. He is.

"You're seriously asking me if I fucked my coach? In juniors?"

And Ilya, who lost his virginity at fourteen, does a biiig dramatic eye roll and is like "Ugh yes Shane i am asking. Or does that hurt your delicate North American sensibilities?" And he's getting a little mean with it now, to try and distract Shane from the way he's looking at him, with this pinched horrified face. "It would not be so crazy." Ilya ends up saying, a little too defensively.

And then Shane is really looking horrified as he says "Did you... Did you have sex with your coach?"

And Ilya laughs, trying to lighten the mood like: "Not my coach. But this old man, he'd come watch my games. He tried to pay me to step on his balls but I thought This is something I'd like to do to this creep for free, yes?"

Shane is not fucking laughing. He looks at Ilya all fucking,,, scandalised and just says, "Ilya, that's awful." So of course Ilya gets extremely fucking prickly about it, and they end up having a huge blow up fight, before Ilya eventually relents and tries to appeal to Galina, who looks at him with no judgement, no real discernible expression, and asks him in his own language if he really finds the memory funny. THEN we get the big cathartic breakdown.

And, as you said, hollanov reconcile via their most reliable means of communication: sex. Ilya gets to dominate his wonderful husband who he loves so so much, and the difference in agency in the two experiences is so stark, it's yet another means for Ilya to reconcile with what happened to him by overwriting it with the man he loves and who loves him. Omg this is making me emotional.

[mybloodstream-caffeine]

Adding @persimmony-snicket's truly CRUSHING tags about Ilya's breakdown with Galina:

[luck-system-shenanigans]

i feel like im a weird age where i got just a blurry glimpse at the world Before. it used to be cold in the mornings and websites had fun games and the search results showed you what you searched for. covid wasn't a thing. can anybody fucking hear me. did i dream it all????

[scunthotter]

I know I've talked about Ilya being frustrated he can't brag about pulling Shane but you know who else would be frustrated about not being able to brag? Yuna Hollander would be so frustrated that she basically has the two best hockey players in the world in her family and she can't even bring up that now she has TWO sons in the mlh and oh what is your son up to Sharon? Hmm that sounds rough that you have to send him money every month. She's in meetings, maybe there are other players agents and managers and they try to bond by putting down Rozanov and she wants to go "your client couldn't even touch Ilya's points per game. Don't fucking talk about one of my boys." and she's so pissed off by the interaction she gets that player removed from the brand deal.

[reigning-catsanddogs]

[raptorific]

[poprocksromance]

A cautionary tale about the growing literacy crisis

[bumblebeebats]

How is it that you can a music library of like 1,200+ absolute bangers but as soon as you put it on shuffle in a group setting it's like. anime opening you added in 2010. homestuck parody song. musical artist who was cancelled last year for kidnapping and eating children in his basement. Hamilton

[bumblebeebats]

I can't believe some people are actually reblogging this like "Tch. Omg, so embarrassing OP, I can't believe you would ever admit to liking Hamilton 😏 " like ok, first of all congratulations for hatching as a fully formed adult in 2022 from the pure white egg of a virgin swan i guess. Raised in a cave on a diet consisting solely of nuts and berries and leftist twitter clapbacks. "ooooooh, I've never had a complicated relationship with a piece of art that was phenomenally well-received at the time but aged like milk as later reflection revealed the fundamental flaws in its premise that were in fact present from its inception but which I didn't notice because I was 17 and hadn't heard of neoliberalism yet" Should we throw a party? Should we invite Anthony Fantano? Anyway second of all. you draw the line at Lin Manuel Miranda but you're fine with basement guy?

[lumsel]

Despite it all I can't hate solarpunk. It's caramel-apple sweet-simplistic, a desire for a greater world on one simple axis without grappling with any kind of political reality. You can chip at its ankles but unfortunately it will still be kind of awesome epicsauce at its heart. Sometimes you really do need to just cut past all the hard-nosed realism, get back to the kid looking up at you with those big blubbering eyes saying "what if everyone was nice to eachother?" That kid does not know an ant's arse about the real world or how it works, but they're still 1000 times more correct than all of us trying to explain why it can't be done. You can't lose sight of the stupid, hopeless dream. You can't lose sight of it. Otherwise you turn into a dickhead.

[r2x2]

The Amnesty International report that JK Rowling is trying to censor through legal threats.

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

[cbarc]

Please save and share this info where possible. This report has since been removed by Amnesty International due to legal threats of libel from JK Rowling. This information is no longer easily accessible.