maybe im not getting better?

Jessie/29 Coming back to the devil’s sacrement ❤️

[hockeyfinches]

can i be real for one second are we not all cultivating vastly intricate filtered content lists. is that just me. i see little to nothing that bothers me. i block anything that could potentially bother me. i am blocking niche tags from 3 fandoms ago for my own peace of mind. i have the name ‘bruce’ filtered

[scissorsaint]

you really do meet some of the loveliest people talking about blood and sex on the internet

[amanitamoment]

Hudson plays Shane like he always has a stomach ache, and that's why heated rivalry is so good

[hauntedyke]

like if u agree

[kaijuerotica]

Ilya Hollander (born June 15, 1991), known professionally as Ilya Rozanov, is a Russian-Canadian professional ice hockey center and captain for the Ottawa Centaurs of Major League Hockey (MLH). Nicknamed "The Russian Menace" and "Roz", he has the most career goals in MLH regular season history of any Russian-born player. He is married to teammate and alternate captain for the Ottawa Centaurs, Shane Hollander.

[ceruleanheaven]

i am always one wrong word away from being shot by all the people who find me tolerable

[dozydawn]

Boston, Massachusetts, 1971. Photographed by Nick Dewolf.

[catsolari]

“Gimme kiss” process 💋

[ilyapasta]

Unfortunately for The Drama, I think they do talk about it

This is my take of the day: I think married, post-TLG Shane and Ilya are decent at healthy communication. In order to do what they have done, namely, become two openly queer professional athletes who end up married on the same team, they've had to become intensely vulnerable with each other.

I know they're hockey players steeped in a rigid culture. I know they both have a cocktail of issues (hyper masculinity, internalized homophobia, childhood abandonment issues, etc.). They are definitely a part of the culture in which they were raised, but I want to talk about the ways they are different from those around them. And those differences mean they have the pathways in which to speak through their issues.

I'm not saying they have perfect, therapy-speak conversations. It's something to the side of that. They don't have the perfect words, but they know how to move through each other's moods and quirks because of the nature of how they finally got together, not in spite of it.

I know that falling in love or being in a relationship doesn't fix your issues, and there's another argument to be made about the trauma that could stem from their years of hiding, but I think the way that Shane and Ilya come together in the first hurdle (HR: coming to the cottage, admitting feelings, planning for the future) and the second (TLG: navigating long distance, Ilya's depression, Shane's shame) required them both to expose themselves in a way that wouldn't be possible if they were both just heterosexual hockey bros who either married their first girlfriend or were simply notorious womanizers.

And that's because of their circumstances, not in spite of them. I'm not saying being queer makes you automatically enlightened, but it does make you think more than a person fully steeped in dominant culture. It's the classic thing, when you're straight you don't have to come out, people assume that's what you are and therefore you don't have to think about it. When your desires, thoughts, or identity don't match the mainstream, it means you will think about them, rationalize them, analyze them, make plans to conceal them, make plans to act on them, and more. This can stunt you, for sure. It can make you mean and closed off and bitter, but that doesn't happen for Shane and Ilya because they have each other.

This is why Scott Hunter is an important part of the story. He's different from them because he has never rooted himself in his sexuality. He gets a fix where he can and puts it aside on other days. There's no long term string connecting him to being gay until he meets Kip, and I like that he's in his thirties in the show, it really makes it more weighted just how long he's gone without any sort of validation of this part of his desires. The way he moves too quickly, too intensely, their relationship burning hot and fast with immediate confessions of feelings, an instant intimate relationship, and living together, indicates his level of inexperience but desperation to finally have this. Scott didn't have an Ilya Rozanov to look at him at 19 in the showers and say "it's okay to desire something."

But Shane and Ilya, unknowingly, go on this journey of self-discovery together. They have different stories: Shane isn't gay, he's just doing this one thing with Ilya before he finds a girl and gets married. Again. And Again. And Again. Ilya isn't ashamed of his queerness, but operates in the concrete view that he could never actually have something long-term in that realm. Importantly to me, they have both gone through something. A transformation. They both had to come to terms with who they are and what they are to each other. Cisgender, White, Heterosexual men definitely have issues, but their issues in general aren't about their identity not matching the mainstream and finding how to fit within it.

So when it comes to disagreements, tiffs, little tilts to their tone of voice that indicate the other person is pissed-off, annoyed, or downright angry, I think that the other one would say "Wait, what's wrong? Can we talk about it?" because they've gone through so much! They've had to think and plan and rationalize and weigh the odds and do so much critical thinking about their relationship, so by the time they're married, on the same team, moving in the same direction, I just think that they would be able to talk. I think they have the tools. I think they're great at the little talks, the "you seemed weird earlier is something going on?" type talks. They know how to listen and comfort each other with their presence (it literally starts at the cottage!) and they also both take comfort in the physicality of their relationship, and I think over time their communication becomes more integrated with sex, so they're not avoiding communication by having sex, like they were in TLG. They are making their own language. They are analyzing, interpreting, and creating, all higher order thinking skills.

It's not that they never fight. It's that their fights are genuinely formed from the stresses of queer, public-facing, work pressure-based, married life, and not always from their own internal issues or inherent "flaws" from the time before. Shane doesn't have the same issues he had when they were hooking up, and neither does Ilya. It's not that they never hide their feelings, but hiding their feelings stems from not wanting to stress the other person out or other factors, not from an inability to be vulnerable. They had to expose everything to the other person in order to make this situation work. They admitted feelings and then immediately started a 4-year long term relationship that culminates in a marriage. Not a break-up, not a toxic relationship-- an honest to god relationship that uplifts them both. They've dealt with a lot, they can handle a little healthy communication. They can fight about big things and then slunk back to each other and be like "well that was bad, let's re-do?" If we are operating under a belief that people can learn lessons and grow, Shane and Ilya will only become better at being together as time goes on.

I still like making them a little less mature in fic though. As a treat.

[cecoeur]

Love Ya, Mwah! (I know he made the sound)

[fairycosmos]

being called an old soul when you were kid and knowing you just got diagnosed as a weird cunt

[iressails]

when you're presented with glorious full frontal and instead you're gazing deeply into their eyes. love baby love

[it-will-pass]

standing like a goody-two shoes with that dorkass smile after pissing offff his situationship/rivalry/crush #exactly

[ngalitzine]

He wanted to tell Shane that the closest he felt to home was when he was with him. It didn't matter if it was in a hotel room, Ilya's apartment, or here at Shane's cottage; he was himself when he was with Shane. He'd left Russia, he was uneasy in America, and he's spent his entire adult life drifting between continents and lovers. But now he had been reeled in by this annoying Canadian, and all he knew was that he wanted to stay. He wanted to anchor himself to Shane and just... stay.

[gayhockeyshow]

Overstim works so well for Shane bc like this post pointed out, he is a sensory seeker! He thrives in the noise of a packed stadium or in the back of a concert venue or when Ilya is slamming him into the boards or onto the bed. And the thing is. Everything always feels so so good with Ilya. Ilya knows exactly how to make Shane light up, every cell in his body responding fully and beautifully to his touch. He’s coming so readily and easily for him. Bliss vibrating up his vertebrae. Filling up his lungs. Ilya doesn’t even pause for a second before he goes in for more. And Shane doesn’t even protest. He wants it, he needs it, he deserves it. Ilya pushing him past the point of arousal all the way to painful and then right back around. And Shane lives for it. Lives to feel his body this deeply. He can feel the pleasure in his eyelids, on the soles of his feet. Its everything. Its not enough. And the good news is, Ilya is always right there to give him more

[gayhockeyshow]

Additionally he is an athlete and Shane Fucking Hollander and so I do think there’s an edge to it of pushing his body to do more more more

[2colde]

the implication of saying hi

[berdymane]

Saying hi ending explained

[imnormal445]

I'd say no one's trying to take Shane from him but girl I am so 💀