lyric_ghost on ao3 @lyricghost - Tumblr Blog

Sometimes this gets overlooked because of first time anal but I always get emotional when I think about them kissing LIKE THAT for the first time in TWO YEARS

AU where Shane discovers a Death Note lying in the street and naturally he uses it to kill other MLH players who are bad at hockey. That guy who missed an easy shot that would have kept his team in the playoffs? Dies of a heart attack on the ice. It's only fair.

Ilya is the brilliant detective who surprises everyone by turning out to be a sexy manwhore party boy who doesn't own any shirts with sleeves. He eventually finds out that the murderer is Shane but he thinks it's hot when Shane kills. So it's their little secret. The end <3

#i love being on tumblr and not having to censor myself #this was NOT a Threads thought #heated rivalry #hollanov #shane hollander #ilya rozanov #death note #for some reason #imagine the “L walks into the scene eating a bag of chips” scene but it's Ilya sauntering into the scene wearing a tank top #shane x ilya

nightspires

Ummmmm you simply have to read influential men by lyric_ghost. I just finished it and I’m going CRAZZZYYYY. I wasn’t expecting this fic to go the places it did. So good. Please read asap!!!!

AO3 link here

shanehollanderilyarozanov

HEATED RIVALRY 1.01 / 1.02 / 1.04 / 1.05

#heated rivalry #I will never understand people who say there's nothing kinky about hollanov's relationship #I have to assume that they learned about kink from 50SoG and think it's just a guy being shitty and abusive to someone who doesn't like it #heated rivalry is sooo infused with these little kinky moments for those who are attuned to them

kcrabb88

I feel like we really lost something when we started looking at writing as a reader-centric product meant to appeal to the desires of a specific audience rather than a writer-centric approach of someone writes whatever particular thing particular compels them/whatever weird thing the demons in their head want to talk about, and people out there who are also compelled, and/or relate, find that writing. A lot of discussions of writing really center around what readers want rather than a writer's exploration. Sometimes as a reader I don't know what I want. I click on a fic or pick up a book I'm not sure about but that looks interesting, and I love it. Reading what I expect to get is it's own joy, but we always need to expand our horizons and not get mad at creators for not always writing what we want/expect.

deletiaclementine

It’s actually so funny that in the Tampa hotel room Ilya says it’s simple and Shane’s like shut the fuck up Pinocchio and come sit next to me

thisfeebleheart

Shane can't look at Ilya and not just want to crawl up in that. - Hudson Williams (x)

honeyybrii

i swear the most glaring evidence of fake cool ilya being the biggest loser alive is him dressed up, fully ready to go be slutty in a club with probably the hottest woman alive - who he used to regularly hook up with - and while she's getting ready he sits in the dark moodily like a dramatic supervillain watching a documentary about his situationships cottage

gaynehollander

Some of y'all won't like this but I think people fundamentally misunderstand the "you really think that far ahead Hollander?" scene and it leads to misreading Shane's entire character. He says it himself: "I do. About this."

Shane isn't planning out every detail of his day ten years in the future. He isn't out here reading the instruction manual of his microwave, he isn't making excel spread sheets on every little detail or pouring over the settings on his washing machine. He hopes to still be playing hockey, he hopes to still be with Ilya. He will do everything he can to bring about that future. If it isn't about those two things, he's not really that bothered.

Shane is a jock who has spent his whole life building towards becoming the best NHL player in the league. He moved out of his parent's house as a teenager, after he secured an NHL salary. He has a team of people who organise his schedule. He has an interior designer. He has a stylist. He definitely has a cleaner, a trainer, a nutritionist. He gets his meal prepped meals delivered and only has to worry about heating them up.

Like, I get that neurotic planner Shane is a fun fandom trope that I, myself, often enjoy and engage with but I do think it's rooted in a misunderstanding.

assortedpuzzlepieces

🎤 say it LOUDER

Personally I genuinely believe that part of why people also see him as so organized & detail oriented is because they cannot fathom the level of privilege that comes with the type of money Shane has.

According to the Government of Canada to be in the top 1% of income earners in the country between 2010 to 2010, you must earn between .2 to .27 million dollars.

Not twenty seven million. Not two millon. POINT two million. As in 200,000 dollars.

Shane was #2 draft pick for the NHL. Even on his entry level contract he would have been earning at least 1 million between base pay and bonuses, and that is before all his brand deals. Even if you round down & say he only made a million dollars in 2010, that’s FIVE TIMES the minimum entry for top 1%.

IN FACT by 2017, Shane was WAYYYY above the threshold for top 0.01% of earners, which is the smallest percentage Canada measures for, and which begins at 2.7 million annually.

This man has MONEY. And not just a bunch of stocks in a business somewhere, “I’m valued at X dollars” money.

Actual money.

In the bank.

Ready to spend at a moment’s notice.

What he doesn’t have is time. He’s constantly working. He spends his time playing hockey, training for hockey, traveling for hockey, doing all those endorsements, and fucking the love of his life.

He literally says in the show that he gets like 2 weeks off a year. The reason he asks Ilya to come to his cottage for 2 weeks is because that’s the extent of the time he can secure all for himself without any kind of professional commitment.

Shane can literally put a price on his time, and there’s absolutely no way he’s going to spend it doing stuff that he can delegate to someone else unless he feels there’s a good reason to do so. Which, granted, some stuff he’d have to do to secure his privacy. But that’s also why he dropped millions on a special building just to fuck Ilya without worrying someone would catch them.

This is literally part of what Ilya finds so amusing about Shane! Ilya has stuff outside of hockey that he loves! Clubbing and flashy cars and cool clothes and expensive alcohol. He drops money on stuff he enjoys. And let’s not forget Ilya also has money & privilege that comes with it. Even knowing he’s sending money home, let’s not pretend that means he’s broke. Dude is buying Bugattis for shits & giggles, that is not something a broke person can afford. But I’ll save my feelings on how people depict him as financially ignorant another day.

The thing we see Shane enjoy most outside of hockey is architecture, and notably Ilya loves to tease him about it, but he’s also endeared by the fact that instead of trying to find other things to like or figure out his “style” (whether it be clothes or room design), Shane just pays someone else to figure it out so he can spend his energy on playing hockey and getting fucked.

So yeah, I do think Shane plans ahead when it comes to their lives, but even that is bold strokes. His plan is literally “what if you played for Ottawa & we convince people we’re friends, and then maybe one day, once we retire, we could be together for real?” That’s like… barely a rudimentary outline of a plan?!

He’s not a micromanager, he’s a delegator. He decides what he wants & then hires other people to help him obtain it.

And lest we forget, this man completed an elaborate proposal to his boyfriend by STEALING his boyfriend’s proposal idea, and then somehow failed to obtain a DJ or CHAIRS for his own wedding when he was left in charge 💀 because he literally didn’t care about the details, he just cared that he got to marry the love of his life.

#The Cottage becomes an even greater sign of love when you realize what a gift it is #the gift of time #Shane has millions and millions of dollars (Canadian!) but he only has two weeks and he gave them to Ilya and Ilya did the same #So the Cottage is worth more than if he'd bought Ilya a Bugatti or something #I mean I know this is all explicit in the show but these posts highlighted it for me because it's easy to forget because the Cottage #has so much going on!!#but yes i love being technically correct the best kind of correct #and Shane's “I do. About this” is a big character note

nuancecomprehender

my life isnt perfect but at least im not doing a mans laundry

#genuinely think this all the time :)

lierdumoa

I've remarked that Carter Vaughn isn't the perfect ally. He means well, and deserves credit for that. At the same time, it's important to acknowledge that it was problematic of him to automatically assume that Shane's figure skater friend was "probably gay" just because the guy was a figure skater. He has some stereotypes he needs to unlearn.

That said,

He called gay athletes brave, where his teammates could hear him, and he showed up to cheer for an athlete he believed was gay as a gesture of solidarity. That's way more than any of the other straight guys in the show were willing to do. That automatically makes him a better ally than Marleau or Pike or any of the other straight dudes who said nothing and did nothing to uplift queer people.

Not one single other straight character in the show made a point of verbally expressing support for queer athletes in front of his teammates/friends.

We can "headcanon" other characters as queer allies, but Carter Vaughn is the only canon queer ally.

Book!Hayden was quick to reassure Shane that he was cool with Shane being gay after Shane came out, but he had nothing to say on the subject before Shane came out. Maybe he never threw around the word "cocksucker" in the locker room the way J.J. did, but he never told J.J. to stop either.

The support Carter Vaughn offered may have been imperfect, but at least it actually was support, and not silence.

I just feel like it's sometimes a little too easy for people in fandom to project perfect allyship onto characters who haven't actually done any allyship at all, while simultaneously over-scrutinizing characters who make a real effort to be allies, just because they didn't do it perfectly.

It's a little too easy to pick apart characters like Carter Vaughn for not going about support in the right way, and then turn around and assume that characters like Marleau would do better in the same situation, when it's just as likely they'd do worse, or they'd do nothing.

#i love carter vaughn!!

ilyushkalyublyu

So, I've been reading along with a reheat with my IRL friend who is also obsessed, trying to understand the choices Jacob Tierney made in his incredible adaptation, and to see if there are any patterns, and it's really interesting, because there are some very systematic adjustments he made to the tone of the story.

Here's what I've noticed:

There is a lot more actual rivalry in the book, and a lot more negative emotion in general. Both Shane and Ilya have inner voices rife with internalised homophobia, and Jacob did not bring that to his show. The rivalry never feels heated, and their sex scenes feel very pure -- two boys who want each other making each other feel good. They hide it because their world would not understand, but they don't seem at all ashamed of it.

He makes almost all the dialogue shorter, more conversational and more effiicient. It feels like it's exactly what you remember from the book, but it seldom is. It's enough to feel faithful, but it's much sharper, and in some cases, very different in tone. For example:

He cuts almost all of Ilya's dirty talk. Ilya is always saying things like "look at you" or "you love it Hollander" or similar while Shane is sucking his dick or something, and JT's Ilya does not say anything like that. His Ilya is gentler and kinder, and most of what he says is checking in with Shane, or expressing stunned disbelief at being desired so voraciously by Shane, and Connor's performance shows that Ilya is entirely disarmed by Shane. He has nothing to say -- he's too lost sensation and emotion.

The one scene where Ilya is a bit less careful with Shane is in Vegas after Ilya wins MVP, but even that, he changes to make it more emotional. Look at this:

Instead of Shane saying "You. Fuck me. Please." JT has Shane say what Ilya really, truly wants to hear -- not that he needs Ilya to fuck him, but that he NEEDS ILYA. "I need you" and "Fuck me" are very different things to say to that character, and in a scene where Ilya is trying to distance himself from Shane because he's starting to realise that his feelings might not be as easy breezy as he'd like, and he's going back to Russia soon is such a bigger gut punch.

I love how that scene ends with Ilya dissociating with an unlit cigarette in his mouth -- a nice callback to the way his lighter only sparks in the first scene in Ep 1 when Shane arrives to introduce himself -- while Shane mourns the fact that they didn't kiss.

I love that he moved "Please fuck me" to the scene when Ilya knows Shane loves him, knows he needs him and wants him, for real, and forever, and that it's in that context that Shane asks to be fucked.

That whole scene at the cottage after they tell each other they love each other is entirely rewritten. The sex they have is really gentle and intimate and all about eye contact and emotional nakedness, but in the book Ilya's being more dominating and sceney.

In the show, it's Ilya who asks Shane how they let this happen, and Shane who says they were both very stupid and irresponsible, and it's Ilya who asks Shane if it's real -- who can't believe Shane loves him. More importantly, though, I feel like Jacob's adaptation threads that emotion through every scene in the show.

Ilya does say "She would have loved you", but he doesn't say "Like I love you." I think it's so moving the way love is linked to their mothers in the show -- Shane saying to Ilya "I love you so much" which is echoed by Yuna, when she says to Shane "Oh, I love you too. So much" and this line which tells you that Ilya, whose treatment of Shane from the start has been so tender and so loving, also learned that from his mother. I love the loving, gentle role of the women in HR.

All of Jacob Tierney's women are full characters with their own motivations and lives and all of them are so kind and important in the journey. A lot of people cry misogyny just because it's a story about men, but it's a story about men that is very much in the interests of anti-patriarchy, and they way JT improved on how Rachel Reid wrote the women deserves its own whole post.

Anyway. Loving my Heated Rivalry book club.

lyricghost

It's fascinating to me that HR's TV show is often praised as such a faithful adaptation when to me there is a monumental difference in that TV Shane and Ilya like each other right from the start. They're rivals in a playful, exhilarating, joyful way (as you say, OP). In a different world, they would have been friends. Whereas for book Shane and Ilya, the vibe is more, "Ugh, I can't believe I'm into this guy." I just find it fascinating that on one level an adaptation can be so faithful (in terms of preserving exact scenes, lines, and details) while on another level, in my opinion, transforming the heart of the story.

#heated rivalry