I Guess I’m Never Leaving The Cottage

My fic: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justhere4ke/works

[fixielixie]

ilya saying things that are blatantly untrue just to see shane’s cuteiful reaction where his big brown eyes go all wide and sparkle and he’s like “really? no way!” and then getting horny when his eyes get all betrayed and he furrows his eyebrows and pouts “fuck you ilya.”

[heymacy]

I should go.

[justhere4ke]

I totally get not reading kid fics but it's kind of interesting all the different things people look for in fics, like I've never once read fics to be escapist, I love when fics delve into all the fucked up shit that happens in real life and are super accurate about it, so it's kind of fun to hear from people who do read fics for escapist purposes.

my personal issue with a lot of kid fics is not only that they can be too pushy with gender norms but a lot of the ones with teenage girls feel like self inserts to me. there's obviously nothing wrong with that, but it's not something I personally ever want to read in this fandom.

Someone sending me an anonymous ask?? I feel famous 😍

lol it really is a big beautiful world of psychological projection with fic huh? Sounds like you don’t have an overwhelming dumpster fire life that you need to mentally escape through fiction? (Me too yeah totally not at all)

I guess for me I just need to read about realities that are different enough from mine to care. Like I know my own life so intimately. I’m parenting constantly, some of my work involves thinking about parenting with people, so I need something more different from my lived reality to feel compelled idk. That’s just me. Maybe there are other parents out here who really want to read about parenting in fic and find in fascinating or immersive.

I have not encountered the teenage girl self insert you speak of. But have to agree I don’t think that would be my jam. I need my projection with a nice thick veneer over it ;)

No pressure but do you have any HR fic recs about the fucked up shit that happens in real life? I’d love to see some of the hyper realism that draws you.

[justhere4ke]

Screaming at this bookmark on my fic. You’re welcome or I’m sorry? 😂😂

[justhere4ke]

A confession I need to make that nobody asked for is I cannot read kid fic. If the kid is a teenager maybe. But having young children myself with a partner, kid fic just 1) does not feel escapist enough, 2) does not feel inherently romantic to me (do you know how stressed relationships get when there are young children to care for??), and 3) many of the depictions are just like oh that’s sweet you think that’s what parenthood is like- it’s really not like that at all.

Not to mention, there’s shockingly little depiction of realistic queer ways of becoming parents. A lot of mpreg or hollanov having children with female exes. A lot less adoption, surrogacy, creatrive co-parenting amongst many household, foster care, confusing chosen family, etc. And idk as a queer non-gestational parent I’d love to see more diversity for how a queer couple could become parents that isn’t the typical well our love was so strong we mixed our biology for this child to be part each of us. We’ve gotten that version a lot in our lives, no?

I love to be proven wrong and lord knows there is so much work in this damn big fandom, I may have just missed some good stuff. So please if you have a great rec send along. But usually I feel kid fic tells me more about what the author is projecting onto the romanticism of parenthood than it does anything for me narratively…

[hollanov-ann]

He was now consumed by one thought: No one makes me feel like Ilya Rozanov does.

[heymacy]

When did your English get so good?

[pov-rosie]

All the little kisses Ilya gave Shane —A Full compilation.

[luckydicekirby]

sometimes a fic can just be about the age old question 'how emotionally bad for everyone involved can a threesome be when they all did in fact agree to be there'

[myshippinglove]

My Moon My Man montage was one of the most brilliant montages I've ever seen on screen. It manages to capture what's been happening in their lives individually, while also showing the audience the changes and development of their relationship so beautifully. Absolute perfection ❤️🤌🏻

[lilyhollander]

Sorry it’s literally just because I’m Japanese but I get so worked up over the fact that RR decided to make Shane specifically Japanese-Canadian and then never talked about anything specific to the Japanese diaspora in a post-WW2 context. Like I’m crazy. I know. I know I’m being crazy it’s literally a smut novel but that shit matters!!! The type of desperate assimilation and disillusionment of North and South America-based Japanese immigrants that occurred during and after WW2 cannot be overstated. None of my cousins or even aunts and uncles can speak Japanese— and this isn’t a mistake, but a defense mechanism. Being Japanese was synonymous with “the enemy,” being a spy or traitor, so people were forced to become as American or Canadian as possible, anything to distance from their heritage. What’s crazy is so much of Shane’s mindset makes sense from this assimilationist perspective!! And RR just doesn’t have a significant awareness of any of this so she doesn’t utilize it at all

[userilyarozanov]

SHANE HOLLANDER HEATED RIVALRY (2025 - ) ▸1x04, rose

[garagepaperback]

this is soooooo vague, so excuse me since i can’t quite grasp what exactly i want to ask, but the gist is: i’m writing fic for the first time in like 10 years again, i’m having a lot of fun, but i’m also not a writer per se and never had any education in creative writing. i think being a very pragmatic person also doesn’t help, but that’s beside the point. looking at my draft right now i find it quite flat, i figure what’s lacking the most is metaphor, but even about that i’m unsure. how do you go about creating such meaty depth in your writing? it’s always so layered, kind of a marvel to me, i won’t lie

hi first of all YEAH to writing! yeah to writing and you haven't done it in like ten years! this was me two years ago completely, hadn't put words together in an intentional way since i was in highschool. also a scarily absent formal relationship to spelling and grammar, not a writer and yet. and yet. here you are writing so we must reinvestigate the definition of the word. ya sorry to tell you my friend legally if you're writing you are a writer.

i'm gonna answer your question for real and i'll also answer it for fake right here. i don't think you need metaphor. i have tried to stuff the slack mouths of my own flat-feeling fics with all the velvet petaled imagery in the universe and never has it really added any depth. look at that sentence. i wanted us to consider the flower-stuffed mouth, but for what? seconds later it is a nice picture disintegrating. it was different which leant it the assumption of being dense but it doesn't actually have weight because it didn't deliver us anywhere.

i wanna hear more about what specifically feels flat, but on a broad level, for me if it's flat it's because the character is absent. and not just character but, discovery within character? i have mostly found that transformation translates to the depth. writing really lets us burrow past the protective layers of social projection and aspirational selves we wear on the surface and get down to the genuine who. to show us not just who we are but who we wish we weren't? so i guess i like discovery to happen for the audience/writer first (the 'that's THEM' moment) then culminate for the character. that's what i mean by delivery; we can't just have nice scenery, i want to go somewhere.

and for my actual metaphor answer:

i'm working (not really) on something where they're roommates. they've lived together for years and shane has an enormous unrequited (......) crush, and i want him to sleep on the couch for a period of time.

my options to get him out of the room/on the couch are many. but then i have to peel the surface of this situation back and see what's underneath, how much it emotional weight it can carry for him. like, loud construction on a building across the street - this could work if i wanted to show that he's feeling left behind, too hung up on a guy who doesn't like him while watching the rest of his friends construct a real future. if there's a couple fighting loudly in the apartment below, that works if i want a way for him to reaffirm for himself that intimacy is too messy and not worth it.

but uncomfortable bed that hurts his back? this is my chef's kiss. first of all because i get to write about sensory stuff, sheets that were expensive but feel scratchy and make him sweat, mattress that seems both too hard and too soft - but mainly because i can switch back and forth between describing the bed when i'm really describing ilya, or describing ilya with the same words i've used for the bed. downy, rough, plush, firm, whatever. always there: comfort, always there: trap. i can have double-conversations where ilya asks shane about the bed: "since when?" and shane says, about ilya: "i don't know, i guess it's been like that for a while. maybe i just finally stopped being able to ignore it."

it works because it connects me not just to what shane's feeling but specifically what he's unable to let himself fully feel which is the main time i think metaphor helps. i'm sure i've said muddled versions of this before, but yes, i like metaphor as a way to show the approach/progress of a transformation even while the pov character actively fights being aware of it. the what's-going-on-underneath, basically. ideally it's a mirror that gives us a newly reflected angle of the story that the character can't see yet but will soon.

[twinkwolf]

for all that ilya is a flirt with self destructive tendencies, i think shane would be the one to cheat in a future infidelity scenario because he a) has so tightly bottled up his resentment over losing his montreal legacy and displaced those feelings onto ilya, b) finds comfort in punishment and lashing out, and c) still feels the maladaptive erotic pull of a big illicit secret

[justhere4ke]

An interesting thing to me about fanon imaginings about the Centaurs is there is a lot of sexual harassment going on. Like a lot of invasion of privacy (centaurs getting involved in hollanov disagreements, telling them they need to bang to relive their bad moods), downright homophobia (team conjecture about who tops, questions about who is the man), non consensual voyeurism (hollanov fucking loudly without caring who hears in hotels or sometimes in front of teammates, scenes of Hollanov being filmed or photographed without their knowledge) etc. And it’s mostly played for humor.

I’ve done it too in my little writing snippets on here. Don’t get me wrong. But I wonder what it is we’re all longing for with that kind of dynamic. What do we find funny or hot about these scenarios in our imaginings?

[samehere-onlyone]

*boring ≈ fascinating, captivating, irresistible, adorable

[shilyas]

condo stairway scene gets me every single time bc of the way ilya lingers. the way he takes way too long to tie his shoes & adjust his jeans, the way he stands for a moment even though his cab is definitely there & the way he teases shane as he slowly lowers himself to give the sweetest, most unhurried kiss goodbye.