I’m sorry if I ever confuse you by sending you something random. I use the tumblr app and have fat fingers. This is the perfect combo for accidentally clicking features and not being quick enough to undo!
MyShane was DEVASTATED when "Ilya Rozanov Best Hits Compilation" by Hockey_Guy435423 disappeared due to copyright claims. It only had like 200 views and 100 of them were Shane watching with his dick in his hand.
There are others from SportsNet and ESPN but that one just had a certain je n'ais ce quoi that got Shane going. Shane DMs Hockey_Guy435423 but doesn't hear back and goes on a deep dive trying to figure out if there's a way to recover deleted youtube videos and he never does but it's okay because in the process he finds like 5 more Ilya Rozanov fight compilation videos from small creators. He meticulously downloads these to a special folder just in case and adds them to the regular rotation.
16 year old Shane getting flustered from a chirp from a very attractive hockey player he’s facing off against . But then the guy misses a really easy goal & Shane gets the ick so bad it shoves him back into the closet for another year
okay I can’t keep it in anymore. Shane may be autistic, but he simply Would Not have a problem with things being too bright or loud. This boy plays HOCKEY, he is a SENSORY SEEKER, there is NO SUCH THING AS TOO BRIGHT AND LOUD. In my HEART OF HEARTS I know that this man used to stand in the middle of arcades as a child and soak in all of the different sounds and lights and flashy bits and finally feel like he’s getting enough sensation to settle into his own skin. He sleeps under 2 weighted blankets and preferably also another giant 250lb hockey player. He’s not having a problem with too much noise and stimulation. He plays recorded crowd noises from other sports games to focus on stuff. He’s fine sitting in wet clothes for an hour if that’s how long it takes to finish sexting before he gets changed. He’s a SENSORY SEEKER. LET HIM SEEK.
It is key to my personal #myshane that he does not have an autism diagnosis. As a kid he was maybe brought to a specialist, and they looked at him and diagnosed him with Rambunctious Little Boy, because it was the 90s and he wasn't experiencing any significant delays! He was just throwing himself in puddles constantly, and he never stopped wiggling, and his favorite game was Toddler Rave Chamber, in which he shut himself in the bathroom and flickered the lights off and on for as long as it took for his parents to find and stop him.
Wrapping small child Shane in heavy, sweaty hockey gear was an unexpected lifeline in the ongoing battle he's been waging against his body. Gear is heavy. It pressed him into himself. Any sweaty feeling was a bonus, because wet fabric against skin is A Distinct Feeling and that feeling also helped him get the minimum sensory input needed to function effectively. Underarmor would also be a favorite.
(For context: my brother is an autistic sensory seeker. Aside from the ongoing sensory stuff he has very low support needs at this point in his life. I am pulling from Life Experience living with him, I am not spouting autism stereotypes out my ass)
I don't know if monkey bars were a playground staple for Canadian kids in the 90s, but the proprioceptive input from them is GREAT for baby Shane. He's too socially aware to do any visible repetitive motion stims, but sports and playground equipment that involve flinging himself around in space are the best. If there's a convenient puddle on that playground, you'd better believe be is sticking his feet in it. Wet shoes are heavy and heavy things on his body Feel Nice.
The one other sensory thing that I believe in my heart he is doing (and he is NOT growing out of) is chewing. The hoodie-string-sexting shot is foundational for me. He's bitten through a dozen pens. He's chewing off his fingernails. If he had long enough hair, you'd better believe it would be in his mouth. He's chomping on his mouthguard like it's a chew toy. Somewhere in the depths of his juniors teammate's myspace page is a pic of him straight up biting a beer can in half. It's played off as a joke, but if something looks like a nice texture it WILL go in his mouth. It's a matter of when, not if. He’s a biter because Oral Sensoru Input Very Good, and he will never be stopped.
okay i think i'm obligated to say that although i am a mental health professional very obviously nothing i post on my heated rivalry tumblr is professional advice nobody sue me or anything. i should also probably caveat that i am coming from a very specific perspective: i'm a relational psychoanalyst; i have adjunctive training in several behavioral modalities but i believe very, very strongly in relational psychodynamic work as being THE thing. for patients with complex relational trauma (aka mr. ilya rozanov), i don't believe anything else can create lasting change. i also don't believe in the medical model of mental health. these are things about which reasonable people can, of course, disagree, so i'll try to separate out things i think she does WRONG vs things i think are missed opportunities to do well/what i would do differently
THINGS THAT ARE WRONG
the biggest and worst: patient presents for therapy for first time despite significant treatment barriers. patient discloses that he believes he is depressed. patient has a first-degree relative who died by suicide. your next question, your very next question, is "are you thinking of killing yourself". you don't beat around the bush, you don't imply it, you don't wait until the patient volunteers. you must ask directly and you must do so before the patient leaves your office, because there is a huge and immediate risk that this appointment is someone's last cry for help before an attempt, and the odds of a depressed patient with a trauma history related to the suicide of a parent attempting suicide is fucking staggering. it is in my opinion malpractice not to even screen for suicidal intent at this first appointment ANYWAY, i do this for all patients and to not do it for someone with ilya's history is outrageously dangerous. life-threateningly incompetent care.
lack of treatment planning: doesn't take a history or anything at the first appointment. jumps directly into talking about a horrific trauma (finding his mother's dead body). sometimes people do come in to a first session in an escalated state and have to begin directly with discussing whatever is happening at that moment, and then you meet them where they're at, but ilya arrives in a calm if slightly nervous state. she should have started by laying out what therapy would look like and beginning to build rapport, not immediately being like "so how about your mom's corpse".
the way she makes the diagnosis of depression is bizarre. “I think you are depressed”. she doesn't clarify whether or not she's actually diagnosing him with depression under the medical model, explain what that means, or ask what it means to him to hear that. it's also MONTHS in, after he came in suspecting depression, that she makes this diagnosis (in the US it has to be in the first session generally for insurance purposes, different, also bad). no actual screening for symptoms, no psychoeducation about what it means to have depression, no sense of prognosis which clearly upsets the patient. it is so important to contextualize a diagnosis, both what the particular diagnosis is and what the act of diagnosing means.
no differential diagnosis. she knows that ilya has experienced at least one criterion A trauma for PTSD (his mother's death) but does nothing to screen for symptoms. she doesn't ask how old his sexual partners he had when he was fourteen were to screen for sexual abuse. she doesn't rule out bipolar which is a must when diagnosing depression. she doesn't ask any questions about substance use or screen for potential neurodivergence or any of a million other things. she doesn't refer to medical for potential physiological contributors for a guy whose career is "getting hit really hard in the head".
no clear treatment plan or goals, and no sense of how therapy is going to work besides… talking? the only goal ilya really sets is "be good enough for my boyfriend," and although she (rightly) pushes back on that she doesn't help him identify an alternate goal. she also doesn't explain what therapy is going to be like or how it works or help him get on board with what the project of therapy is going to be. she seems unshaken when he misses five appointments in a row (if i had a passively suicidal patient miss five appointments in a row i would not be brushing that off, we would be having a good chat about what the barriers to treatment were).
culturally incompetent care: they're part of the same minority group (Russian immigrants) across one axis of identity, but Galina is not a queer hockey player (or as far as we know queer at all). she minimizes and dismisses the discrimination ilya is likely to face in his career from coming out, including the fact that he could get deported to Russia, jumping to a CBT technique that asks him to imagine the worst case scenario without engaging at all with how it feels to be in this position or validating his fears. mental health professionals have an ethical obligation to educate themselves about their patients' identities and to listen first. "I could lose my job and be deported and jailed because of my sexual identity" is not a cognitive distortion, it is a terrifying reality. perhaps an unlikely reality, but it exists. trying to use cognitive therapies to "reframe" real experiences of discrimination is, flat-out, therapeutic abuse. she also should have explicitly responded to his fear that she would out shane when he's afraid to say shane's name, not obliquely implied that she knows they're both hockey players: "i want to let you know that confidentiality extends to anything and everything you tell me, except (reiterate legal carveouts). there are no circumstances under which i would disclose your partner's identity to anyone. if you want to use his name, i won't repeat it to anyone except when we're in this room"
THINGS THAT ARE POOR THERAPEUTIC STYLE IN MY OPINION AND WHAT I WOULD DO BETTER #MYNARCISSISM
lack of curiosity: she does not prompt him to reflect emotionally, even when there are very obvious entry points to do so to do so. i.e. ilya says he's glad his father is dead, which is a huge emotional disclosure that is very risky for a patient to make, especially in a first appointment because he might expect judgment. and she just… asks a factual question about the timeline, rather than engaging with the emotional content in any way (as a relational analyst what i would do here is ask "what does it feel like to share that with me?", but i do not think any good therapist would like, change the subject away from the feeling)
she regularly offers direct opinions about/interpretations of things ilya says, very early in their therapeutic relationship. "that must have been very hard" in response to his father's expectations of him (which he interprets as being about sochi--he seems to hear 'it must have been hard for you to fail like that', which is, uh, bad!), "it's good that you had that," etc. in spite of the fact that he's already indicated a complex relationship with his family and himself that mean he might feel quite differently than someone else expects! was it good that he had hockey, or did it just create another burden on him and his relationship with his father, or is it somewhere in the middle? did his father's expectations feel hard? traumatizing? was he proud that so much was expected of him? when did he notice those feelings? just some questions i might ask. describing how ilya must feel about things closes off conversation.
her affect and presentation in the session: ilya repeatedly notices her masking her reactions to things, like the fact that he became sexually active so young. i guess technically you're still allowed to be a blank slate style therapist, even though i don't know anyone who still does this. but if you're a blank slate, be a blank slate. don't let patients notice that you're hiding your reactions to things. so for instance i would approach that conversation by having whatever reaction i had and then saying, "you might notice i had a reaction to you saying that," and either asking the patient how they interpreted my reaction or asking them if they'd like to know what i'm thinking (and then how does it feel to know that i'm feeling concerned, etc, the relational field goes on forever). my way isn't the only way but if you're visibly swallowing reactions it's bad.
she doesn't check in with ilya about how he's feeling about therapy and dismisses his fear that it's not working. tbh the only thing she says that i like is "i'm good, but i'm not that good," which IS something i might say. but she doesn't go from there, it becomes a way of dismissing his fears. i would have asked what it's like to have to tolerate such a slow and uncertain recovery process. does he think therapy can help? are there ways in which it has helped? how does it feel to talk about it? how does it feel to talk to me about it?
bizarre attitude towards self-disclosure. she gives ilya next to no information about herself, which, again, is an old-fashioned but not per se wrong way to do it. just because i'm the relational yapper machine 3000 doesn't mean that every therapist needs to tell their patient anything about themselves. but she does self-disclose twice. she tells ilya that she's watching their season/is a hockey fan, and makes a weird comment that she also enjoys shopping as a coping mechanism but that bedsheets are more in her price range than sports cars. even though i'm the yappatron 3000 i would not choose to make these particular disclosures! admittedly if i had a famous patient and i knew about their career i would probably tell them that directly in the first session, i would not however make asides about it because now you're kind of creating a dual relationship. the bedsheets thing is weird bc you gotta keep a wiiiide birth around anything even quasi sexual, like don't invite a patient to imagine what your bed is like you weirdo. also finances are usually an inappropriate thing to self-disclose, because therapy is also a financial relationship! i would never joke about how a patient has more money than me (even though most of my patients have a lot more money than me), it seems likely to induce guilt and also to disturb the therapeutic frame around money which is hard to manage anyway
post tlg some random asshole defenseman makes a shitty comment about shane taking it up the ass and shane looks at him, then at the scoreboard that shows the centaurs winning 6-1, then back down at him like "i dunno man i think one of us is getting fucked in the ass right now and it isn't me." and then that guy tries to fight him
Shane has always been so polite, it feels to other teams like he’s had a personality transplant once he joins Ottawa. In fact, he’s just finally letting his inner snarky bitch run free. Everybody in the league except Hayden, JJ and Ilya are dumbfounded when it turns out nice, polite Shane Hollander has a bitchy side. They always knew about it.
And really, what can this random d-man from another team do to Shane? He’s heard all the homophobic chirps before. He’s been outed. The commissioner has threatened to take hockey away from him. He’s been run out of his old team on a rail. Some sponsors have probably dropped him because suddenly he’s “controversial.”
Total strangers on Twitter who used to worship Shane are sending him death threats. People he’s known for a decade (people he used to consider his friends) assume he threw games for Ilya. People whose weddings and birthday parties he attended didn’t show up for his wedding, have turned on him, are actively bad-mouthing him in the press.
The polite golden boy persona always seemed like protective camouflage. But when the chips were down, it did nothing to protect him. Shane may as well say what he really thinks from now on. That random defenceman won’t know what hit him.
there’s this belief that ilya is the bottom in their relationship and it doesn’t help he’s so flamboyant and there’s this joke around “he’s gay or european?” which is obviously based on nothing but stereotypes. shane is always carrying ilya’s stuff, and holding ilya’s waist and ilya is always sitting on shane’s lap and doesn’t help at all he’s always making shane’s plate at the gatherings. and one time shane fixed a pipe at one of the centaurs house and the wags spread the story around so people really just assume that shane is the “man” of the house. the thing is that ilya and shane never share, confirm or denies what happens in their private lives. their dynamics is for them only and rose landry
at the cottage shane comes up to Ilya so much with some sort of bug or critter in his closed fist that ilya is constantly on alert when shane comes near him with a closed hand. he’s like “shane what do you have do you have a bug get away from me shane shane!!!” and shane is laughing and coming closer holding his closed hand out like “babe its fine just look.” and ilya is like “shane i am so fucking serious right now.” and shane is trying not to double over in laughter because he literally has nothing in his hand.
"'We could only have one child,'' David said quietly. "We thought about adopting, but we decided in the end to just focus on making Shane the best person we could. I think we did an okay job of it.
Ilya smiled at the understatement.
"We couldn't be prouder of the man he's become,' David continued. "I don't have any Stanley Cup rings, but I have Shane.''
Chapter 39, The Long Game
....
It's Christmas of 1988.
There's one more present under the tree, and Yuna's eyes are dancing as she hands it to David. He opens it to find the tiniest pair of shoes he's ever seen.
"No. Really?" He's dizzy.
"Really," Yuna grins, and her eyes are shining with tears, and David loves that face more than anything. He hopes their baby looks just like her.
.....
It's a bitterly cold day in February of 1989 when David puts the shoes away. He pushes down all the anger of it's not fair, why us, why our baby. Yuna needs him.
The doctor had said you're young, you can try again.
.....
In the spring of 1990 the flowers are blooming to life and Yuna's belly is starting to look rounder. David looks around the empty bedroom in their Ottawa house and thinks green might be nice, something that works for a boy or a girl, a nice cheerful shade. Next week he'll buy the paint.
The call from the hospital comes before he gets the chance. When he looks at the doctor's scrubs he thinks green is the ugliest colour on earth.
.....
They don't talk about it. Not when the leaves are changing colour and the nurse offers them congratulations. Not at Christmas or New Year's as they turn the calendar over to 1991. It's Valentines Day before David gets the courage to touch the rounded swell of his wife's body and he cries when whoever is inside touches him back. It doesn't matter that they don't have a name or a face yet, he loves them so much it hurts.
.....
On a Friday morning in May, David holds his son for the first time. His face is scrunched and blotchy red and angry. He's the most perfect thing anyone has ever laid eyes on.
He watches Yuna sing and rock him near the nursery window at home, her face glowing. He thinks the yellow paint was definitely the right choice for their sunshine, their only sunshine.
.....
Shane is a chubby baby (they laugh themselves sick when the baby shoes don't even fit on his fat little biscuit feet) but by the time he turns two he has leaned out into a little boy, they think maybe they are ready to try again. David imagines a girl this time, introducing Shane to his baby sister. Melissa sounds pretty. The baby name book had said it meant honeybee and doesn't that just fit perfectly amidst sunshine and flowers and springtime?
.....
It never happens.
Shane is an only child at four and five and six and he's becoming something special on the ice, all the coaches say so. David thinks that they have no idea what they're talking about when they say that because Shane Hollander has always been special from the time he kicked and rolled inside his mother, before he ever knew what cold was.
If he's all they get, they will make sure he knows he is everything.
.....
Sometimes David wants to take Shane by the shoulders and apologize to him for making him think he has to be everything. You don't have to try so hard to be perfect for us, he wants to say. You're perfect to us because you're you, you're ours, don't you know how we prayed and hoped and waited just for you to exist, don't you know that's enough?
Much, much later as he waves to him (to them) in late evening sunshine, he sees Shane relax behind the windshield with a loving hand on the back of his neck. David feels something inside of him loosen.
.....
On Shane’s wedding day, David embraces both his sons and dances with his wife and my god, if this is all he ever gets in life, no man has ever been so lucky.
.....
"Are you ready?" Shane is smiling and his eyes are shiny. Ilya looks much the same.
David is dizzy. But he nods and holds his hands out. Shane places the baby in his arms and oh, she's so tiny. He forgot how tiny they start out.
Her little knit hat is yellow.
"Hey there, honeybee," he murmurs, and his voice is foggy with unshed tears. "I'm your grandpa."
Assorted "Shane becomes familiar with the rhythms of Ilya's depression" thoughts post-TLG:
Shane talking too much because he realizes that Ilya isn't talking at all and he needs to fill the silence and make sure Ilya knows that Shane isn't holding it against him.
Shane double triple checking that the backup meds are in Ilya's carry-on before they go on a Western Conference road trip. He doesn't nag Ilya about it, but when they get to the airport Ilya starts rifling through everything, thinking he forgot them, when Shane reaches into the front pocket and shows him the orange bottle is right there. Not that they couldn't get them, but Shane wants Ilya to avoid stress as much as possible.
Shane notices that Ilya is able to work fine through his episodes, but that hockey tires him out more. He suggests a quiet day at home with Anya in between home games, saying that he actually needs the downtime. Maybe many couch blowjobs can cure depression.
Ilya goes through the phase where he doesn't want to take his medicine because it's fucking with his libido. He throws one of these at Shane- "Your choice, you can leave me because I can't fuck you or you can leave me because I'm a miserable fuck" and Shane loses it because in his mind nothing, nothing, could make him leave Ilya, this is it for him, and yet Ilya continues to think that one inciting event will result in Shane abandoning him. Shane slams the fridge/oven door/barbell or whatever he's holding back into place and says "If you think I'm such a shallow asshole maybe I should draw up divorce papers for you" and then it becomes this theater of Shane opening his laptop to email their lawyer and Ilya starts crawling on the ground begging for Shane to forgive him and crying and Shane has to reckon with how his reaction made this worse but he's only human too and can only take so much when Ilya starts hurling this stuff at him. Shane apologizes too. Ilya takes his medicine the next day in front of Shane while he shaves in the bathroom mirror.
"I'm not your babysitter, Ilya, you have to want to feel better, this is your life" except Shane does hide all the pills in the house sometimes, putting them in his gym bag and keeping them in the car when things are rough. One day while Ilya is chopping vegetables he realizes that he doesn't really know how to hide all the knives. They have a big set, bought during happy times because they really enjoy cooking together, but now Shane is looking at them like they could be the end of his life.
Shane knowing a depressive state is coming on because Ilya directs all his responses to Anya.
Happy times when Ilya is evened out, so so happy and making everyone laugh and being the captain that Shane knows Ilya wants to be, and feeling guilty that Shane's come to dread the come-down from such a high.
Shane's desperate phone call with Galina of all people when Ilya disappears for like twelve hours in his Porsche. He's white knuckling not calling the police because he knows it'll leak and everyone will know and there's nothing they can do anyway. Galina talks him through it, keeps him calm, and Shane wonders if this is what therapy is like.
The relief Shane feels when Ilya says he thinks this is the right dose of medicine. He can't help but love it when Ilya holds him so tight, like Shane alone tethers him to the Earth. He can't help but love that Ilya needs him so much.
"Wanna talk about it, baby?" Pause. "No. I want you to get on your knees for me."
i think its so CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY shane has been forced to be bigger than he wants to be bc of all of his strife and obstacles he cant afford to seem weak or small so he has to be Strong and Big and ilya gives him a space to let that go and be small and let things happen to him and not force his strength. and ILYA has been fucking shut down and humiliated and dominated by his father and brother made Smaller than he wants to be but he cant be big to them and he can be biggEr in hockey but hes still put down abt it by his family and haters constantly and SHANE!!!! shane my god shane gives him a space to be big and be Unquestionably big and for someone to love him while hes being big and mean and dominating and hes never gotten that before. lets all live theyre literally perfect for each other theyre the oasis in a desert for each other for BOTH of them ilyas the only one for shane and shanes the only one for ilya too.
them in the bed, the day shane signed with ottawa centaurs, facing each other and smiling, and giggling and giving heart eyes for each other. and then it hit them and they start to tearing up cus well now they don’t have to count the days and hours of being together, they don’t have to say goodbye no more. they can have this, every night. they can wake up together, eat together, practice together, traveling together and playing together. everyday, after so many years yearning for this. and now they’re facing each other in their bed and silent tears is coming down but they can’t stop smiling. and ilya asks with this choked up voice “it’s real, yes?” and shane just closes the distance and kisses his face all over and whispers “yes, and it’s forever”
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