[pluvialcity]

Ilya is so used to being the one doing the manhandling that when Shane picks him up for the first time he's just like

[totearup]

Cliff can't believe he didn't figure it out sooner. The strange move to Ottawa. How happy he's been. And most damming of all, "Jane", it fucking rhymes!

He watches a highlight reel of Ilya celebrating with his line and realizes he's just going to have to accept it.

Ilya was in love with Zane Boodram.

[unrivaledhollanov]

[ilyapasta]

Question for people with better memories than me and more hockey knowledge- do we know what Shane did pre-nhl? Like yes the junior Canadian national team, but what about like his own juniors experience? Would it have been an OHL team? If so, which one? If this is mentioned in the books let me know I tried looking for it and just don't see anything on his pre-draft stuff besides the international stuff.

[pluvialcity]

reblogging because this got kinda long, sorry! other people have covered most of this in the replies, but some additional details:

He def would have played somewhere in the CHL, which is the umbrella org for the QMJHL, OHL, and WHL. All of these leagues have drafts, and which draft you're eligible for is determined by geography, so he'd probably be in the OHL, and could have ended up on any team based on who selected him in the draft. If he were drafted by a team near Ottawa, he could stay with his parents; if not, he'd be placed with a billet/host family by the league.

WJC (the winter international championship, can't remember what they call it in the show/book) is a big deal for players in these leagues, so junior/college teams will release their players for a few weeks so that they can go and practice with the national teams and compete in the tournament. This is something he could have done regardless of which junior league he was competing in.

Unless I'm missing some hockey fact (which is possible, I'm not an expert!) I think the extra year between between the draft and the NHL is just a timeline error, because it would be extremely weird for them to send him back down. But yes, if that did happen for some reason, he would probably have headed back down to his OHL team for an extra season; the few recent highly-drafted players who have deferred after the draft have done so because they wanted to stay in college for an extra year, but that doesn't feel like it would be the case for either Ilya or Shane (though I guess it's possible).

Hope that helps!

[pluvialcity]

(in my head this game starts when ilya accidentally gets Svetlana and Shane fucking blasted on vodka tonics the first time they meet each other bc he's nervous about them getting along. it turns out that's not what he should have worried about)

cliff, svetlana, and shane (I'm picturing this like 3-5 years after the hollanov marriage when they're all comfy with each other) have a party game where they make increasingly exaggerated versions of ilya's o-face at each other until either a) one of them cracks and starts giggling, or b) Ilya catches them and carries the loser outside to dump them in the lake

[huliajelena]

how‘s the water?

you‘re in it

yeah, but i want to know how you like it

[pluvialcity]

messy svetlana is my favorite fucking thing, so I hc svetlana as like, the cryptid of boston's sapphic scene.

she's the hottest woman in any bar she walks into. she started off at the edges of the most toxic polycule in the brunch circle and she demolishes the entire group dynamic in two weeks flat by fucking everyone until they realize that they all hate each other. she'll snort coke off your tits, fingerbang you until you cry in the club bathroom, and then completely disappear from the scene for three months.

when she showed up at Dyke Night at Machine in Fenway it was like a shark showing up at a beach full of swimmers. She'll hold your hair in the bathroom when you're sick, give you a breath mint, and then buy you another shot so you can get back in the game. she hooks up with couples who are looking for bi unicorns on the dating apps with the express goal of breaking them up bc that woman deserves better than a man who talks about being an early crypto adopter.

I love her. she's the worst. she and ilya deserve each other [affectionate, derogatory]

[pluvialcity]

I put this in the tags, but then I decided I wanted it to be part of the actual post:

#crucially Ilya is also doing all of these things and they call each other on the phone and twirl their hair and giggle about it #you simply cannot convince me that the woman who brought her bestie a consolatory twink and coke to lift his spirits after his olympic failure #is dispensing wise relationship advice and telling him to talk about his feelings

[omens-of-what-is-to-cum]

okay put some respect on the name of my good friend Shane Hollander, because this man is the the creator of the iconic chirps “just a bunch of Finnish guys talking about the cousins they're in love with” and “Jeez Hayden, you wanna get me pregnant too?”

like WHAT is this ‘Shane can’t chirp’ propaganda or this ‘Shane can’t tell when people are being sarcastic’ insanity or this ‘Shane needs Ilya or Yuna to do social interactions for him’ silliness

[pluvialcity]

Once ilya and shane are on the same team they are absolutely nasty with each other

Not sexually (their teammates would maybe prefer that, actually), just straight-up gross:

they would swap mouthguards if they weren't custom fitted

Same water bottle. They don't even pretend they have separate ones. There's no heterosexual squirting the water into their mouths from a distance, they're fellating those gatorade bottles

All of their base layers are communal. So is their deodorant.

full visual inspections of each other's injuries. shouldering in next to the team medic to look into each other's bloody mouths and applying each other's steri-strips to keep cuts closed.

putting on shin guard tape for each other

sharing smelling salts, like literally same stick. at the same time. making intense eye contact while they do it.

[pluvialcity]

messy svetlana is my favorite fucking thing, so I hc svetlana as like, the cryptid of boston's sapphic scene.

she's the hottest woman in any bar she walks into. she started off at the edges of the most toxic polycule in the brunch circle and she demolishes the entire group dynamic in two weeks flat by fucking everyone until they realize that they all hate each other. she'll snort coke off your tits, fingerbang you until you cry in the club bathroom, and then completely disappear from the scene for three months.

when she showed up at Dyke Night at Machine in Fenway it was like a shark showing up at a beach full of swimmers. She'll hold your hair in the bathroom when you're sick, give you a breath mint, and then buy you another shot so you can get back in the game. she hooks up with couples who are looking for bi unicorns on the dating apps with the express goal of breaking them up bc that woman deserves better than a man who talks about being an early crypto adopter.

I love her. she's the worst. she and ilya deserve each other [affectionate, derogatory]

[ilyasmole]

ilya's bisexuality really is such a vital part of his character and his identity and i Do get a little bothered when people (usually normies/straight people) just refer to him as gay bc he's in love with a man....but that's just my personal feelings as a #bi person

[ilyasmole]

ACTUALLY i'm adding onto this bc there's something i always notice in ep 6 that i wanna talk abt briefly, and that's yuna & david's faces when shane says "ilya likes both" - especially yuna

there's concern there. it's obvious. and it's SO common when it comes to bisexuality bc there's this huge and annoying misconception that bisexual people are unfaithful unloyal cheaters. and you can see it in her face as she processes the information that this is an immediate concern for her and for her son.

and now let's look at ilya's face

now he's concerned, because he knows he has to explain himself (which he does. he shouldn't have to but he does) and he's basically throwing out a hail mary to shane's parents that says hey, wait, no, i'm not gonna cheat on your son. i love your son. just because i'm bisexual doesn't mean i would hurt shane.

and this is something bisexual people deal with all the time btw. not just from straight people, not just from gen x & boomers, but from our own community too. it's incredibly exhausting. anyway i just notice this every time it makes my heart hurt a bit for ilya.

[s-o-r-i-n]

between shane's neurodivergence and ilya's bisexuality neither of them know how to sit normally. put them next to each other for more than 10 minutes and they will inevitably start playing twister. they are coming up with positions you couldn't even conceive of. the centaurs have an entire shared photo album dedicated to pictures of them sitting in positions that Can't Possibly Be Comfortable but they somehow maintain for an absurd amount of time anyway. the most crucial part of this is that it's entirely subconscious and it takes several different people pointing it out to them before they even realize they're doing it

[janerozanova]

That’s hilarious because that’s literally hudson and connor to a point.

[casscainmainly]

If you're a POC who has felt kinda terrible in fandom spaces recently just know you're not alone & you deserve to be here & you deserve respect and comfort and love & nobody has the right to make you feel like you don't

[checkyourasianbias]

#idk i've been pondering recently that it's absolutely not the responsibility of poc to educate non-poc peers abt racism#like it just sucks that so often we are burdened with the task of education and it leads to poc being burnt out at alarming rates#but also if we don't say anything it will just continue because we can't really trust White ppl to recognise it for themselves#so you either burn out from speaking up all the time or burn out from a silence that eats you alive from the inside out#and that is just unacceptable. i have to believe these are not the only fates for poc in fandom (or life in general)#idk idk. i don't have anything insightful or new to say abt it tbh#i'm not sad necessarily just i guess a little tired. but it's ok there are still great ppl in this fandom of course#so ty to the ppl who do strive to make fandom inclusive and anti-racist and who speak out and who try to better themselves#& the environment around them. your effort does not go unnoticed at all and i love you ❤️❤️❤️ <- OP's tags, if I may be allowed to add them this way, because I think this is equally important to hear. Sending you a lot of hugs and love 💗🫂

[shanehollanderr]

i think shane and ilya should be grosser

[aenigmatica]

everyone should say all the ways in which they feel shane and ilya should be grosser

[pluvialcity]

Shane, like the man he's based on, should have an ancient decrepit lucky jockstrap that's older than some of his teammates

[gloryhollanovjah]

Drunk Shane can be a bit of a menace. A drink or two is fine, but eventually he'll hit a point where you turn around and he's gone, literally gone because he's going places and he'll happily come trotting back when Ilya calls him, but that's only helpful if he's in earshot, which... can be a challenge.

Drunk Shane when Ilya is ALSO drunk is the BEST. His boyfriend is sooooo funny and soooo fast and strong and smart and brave and they're going on an adventure!!! Ilya doesn't know where but his legs are wrapped around Shane's waist and Shane's arms are wrapped around his legs and the back of Shane's neck smells so good and they're GOING!!!! They're going and going and going because Shane can run forever he's the best hockey player in the whole world and he's Ilya's BOYFRIEND and they're gonna live forever and the stars are out and his mama is watching them and Ilya doesn't even know he's smiling until his cheeks start hurting from it.

(inspired by this post from @pregnanthudsonwilliams) (I've never seen Twilight I'm just having fun)

[pluvialcity]

I like some iterations of 'Shane walks Ilya like a dog' because I think sub top Ilya is hot as fuck and I like that in show canon he gets off a little bit on Shane being able to throw him around and not being afraid to be snarky with him, but so often fanon and fic just turn it into the nagging wife trope and it's such a let down. Like no Ilya does not need to be told to clean up after himself or eat healthy, he's a grown man.

Honestly, I can be talked into a pretty wide variety of both shipping and sex dynamics by people who are good at writing, so I can vibe with all of this. I don't want my role in fandom to be like: plu, killer of joys and yucker of yums—the fact that I personally am not fond of a dynamic does not (yet) make it illegal to post on the internet, so I hope people have fun writing and imagining things that are not to my tastes!

[pluvialcity]

myshane speaks French with the crunchiest fucking québécois accent you've ever heard, e.g.

(source)

[pluvialcity]

the fact that Shane and Ilya don't rotate having the captaincy once they're both playing for the Centaurs makes me a little bit furious, actually

if we're going based on NHL history here, Shane would only have been the second captain of Asian descent in the entire history of the league, and he would be the first to lead a team to a Stanley Cup victory. Shane is already taking a pay cut to join the Centaurs; asking him to also be stripped of an extremely historically significant leadership position would be... fucking shitty, actually

there's substantial precedent for NHL teams doing this (the Minnesota Wild rotated their captain every 1-2 months for almost a decade), and many teams will have no captain (just alternate captains) during transitional periods, so there is no earthly reason why two players on the same team of Shane and Ilya's caliber wouldn't be sharing leadership duties

anyway. Shane's really fucking good at hockey and also at captaining his hockey team (as evidenced by their record), and the fact that this isn't thoughtfully handled in the text makes me want to chew on fucking drywall