Poly reblogging the post on Truman show while u have the snapping birch au, sochi au, and child star crash out au is giving fourth wall breaking. (Fourth dimension breaking? META BREAKING?? THE AUS ALL HAVE CAMERAS, AKNOWLEDGING THEIR FICTION BUT STILL RELEVANT TO CURRENT SOCIETY IS METAAAA???poly i thunk too hard)
I reblogged that post because of the AUs lol. It’s been on my mind lately.
Like we really did Truman Show ourselves. So much of our lives is on display because we put it on display. And nowadays especially, it starts before we are young enough to get a choice in the matter. Your digital presence starts before you’re out of the womb—the ultrasound is on Instagram and so is every other moment of your life once you’re done baking. There are a lot of kids who grow up and they are the commodity their parents are selling. Mommy bloggers, kid influencers, the whole schtick—it worries me how little privacy there is these days.
I love the idea of aromantic rose. I’m 50/50 on the idea of rose also being asexual.
On the one hand, making her asexual makes her a more easy character for people to understand. Aroallos get a lot of weird judgement - I think that could add some wonderful flavouring to her psyche. Also. As a character, she seems to actively enjoy and initiate sex.
ON THE OTHER HAND. The idea that she is an asexual who enjoys sex, but views it objectively, without any of her own attraction getting in the way, and thus is able to realise ‘huh. My boyfriend is definitely gay.’, is hilarious.
See I really like both options for Rose.
If I have a character that appears across multiple stories like Rose, I’ll sometimes change their orientation based off of what I want to explore in a story. And I really feel like both aroallo Rose and sex-positive or sex-neutral aroace Rose have really interesting dimensions to be explored. I could see using both of them across different stories.
Across the aroace spectrum, the only thing I think that wouldn’t fit with her appearance in canon would be if she was sex repulsed because of her scenes with Shane. She puts a stop to their relationship because she could tell he was forcing himself through their physical relationship and that doesn’t fit as much if she was also forcing herself through. And also that scene becomes even worse if neither person wanted to be there. I think that’s the only part of the aroace spectrum I couldn’t see myself exploring with rose.
what really fucks me up about watching the truman show in 2025 is how it's not fictional. truman is fictional, but the truman show isn't.
there's thousands of truman shows. you find them on youtube, tiktok, instagram... family and mommy vloggers, sad beige moms and now the trend of neglectful moms showing the "reality" of parenting. all of them using their kids for entertainment. each child their own truman; living a life manufactured by their parents, a camera watching their every moment, broadcasted for the entire world to see.
every day of my life i read someone being like “why doesn’t this story just solve the problem immediately and casually? they just drag it out and make it an issue” well. because that’s the Story
what's the rose situation in the sochiverse? are they still destined to meet and be devoted platonic soulmates on main? how normal do you think people would be about it given the famous hollanov of it all?
Rose and Shane are destined to meet and discover they were Forged Of The Same Star in all of my aus. I am still Rotating and Chewing on the different options for how I bring them together. I’ve got Several Contenders right now and I’m not sure which one will win the day. It may be none of them. I have decided that when they become friends Rose will at one point drunkenly weep with joy about her friendship with Shane because usually she has to date men before they figure out they’re gay but she and Shane can just bypass that phase entirely.
People will talk wildly about them because that’s what people on the internet do. Some news outlets will see them spending time together and accuse them of cheating. I think the internet still struggles with the idea that men and women can just be friends and it definitely struggled with it in 2014-2015. Shane. Could not possibly be more gay.
I think Shane gets a lot of “gay best friend” jokes levied at him in the news and just by the public in general because of it. Like it becomes another way to feminize him. Rose is assumed to be the most stereotypical girls girl to ever walk the earth. Surely, if Shane Hollander is hanging out with her they must be painting each other’s nails and talking about boys. They must be reading fashion magazines and watching say yes to the dress. As if Shane Hollander did not wake up every day and don the most god awful Gym Core chic to ever be sold at an outlet mall. That man paired a fucking blazer with a quarter-zip. He wouldn’t know fashion if he was run over by the entire runway of New York’s fashion week.
They’re not having sex to justify their proximity. A lot of people don’t believe that Masculine Men and Feminine Women have anything to talk about. Shane and Rose feel that the people who think this hate their own spouse and should stop projecting their bullshit on them. They get on like a house fire.
Assuming Shane is One Of The Girls lets them stereotype him and degrade him, so that’s what they go with. Assuming Rose is talking hockey with Shane Hollander elevates her in the weird gender glorification of the internet. She’s Not Like Other Girls. She Knows Hockey. They don’t want to give her those laurels—they want to insult them. So Shane Hollander Must Be A Gay Bestie Of The Ages.
It’s annoying as shit. They don’t really care though. They have found the other half of their soul. They must plan their future together. They must look for adjoining homes and also graves. Ilya why is your eye twitching like that is there something in it
People on Reddit: (when asked about recs for devastating outing fics)
You here: and so Shane and rose are bffs with joint graves (neighbors in every life) and Ilya gets solo mad but they do love each other :))) but not the way you think
Also rose being on the aroace spectrum makes so. So much sense. Yes. I remember reading a fic of her exploring that but I can't find it 😭
Reddit internet strangers I shall WEEP. Yall are too nice to me.
I really do like playing with the idea of Rose being somewhere on the aroace spectrum. I just think there’s so many different interesting ways that it could be explored.
She’s a very beautiful woman in Hollywood. She’s spent most of her life being sold to the public as an object of sexual and romantic desire. She’s spent her life working in film, where very often the proscribed Happily Ever After for women—especially women who look like her—is to Ride Off Into The Sunset With Their True Love. It’s borderline obligatory. It’s How Happy Stories End. You Can’t Be Happy Without It.
And I think it’s got a lot of potential in the sense that I’m not sure that Rose would really have the words to understand her own orientation even though she’s out here regularly sherpaing gay men to self actualization.
Aromanticism and asexuality have become much more prominent in the public dialogue in recent years, but it wasn’t super widely discussed when I was growing up, and Rose would have been born years before I was. I didn’t even know that asexuality and aromanticism existed for most of my life. I didn’t know the words for it. No one told me it was something you could be. And I only found out through fandom, which I doubt Rose would participate in considering it would likely be complicated by its relationship with her own fame. I just see there being a good chance that she’s well into her adulthood before she ever gets the words for what she is.
I just think there’s so many different interesting avenues of exploration with it for her. And I like characters who are aro or ace or aroace. It’s one of my favorite ways to imagine Rose.
Re: Sochibamaverse, one must imagine Shane putting Ilya in that car like a cop. One hand clasped firmly on his shoulder to guide him into the seat one hand on top his head so he doesn’t bump it on the roof
That is EXACTLY how I’ve been imagining it and the second that Ilya’s in the car J.J. comes up behind them and does the exact same thing to Shane.
I adore the Shane+Rose soulmatism in your aus. It is so funny. Imagine being a metro hearing Shane call her the other half of his soul (because theyre incapable of being chill about each other) and youre like Cap buddy didnt you two break up three months ago? and he just stares at you uncomprehending. And then he has the audacity to look shocked when Page Six runs another pregnancy rumor.
Shane + Rose soulmatism my BELOVED. Canon gave us basically nothing about their relationship and mostly just had rose there to be Shane’s gay sherpa and I walked away like “they were forged from the same star.” In every world they will find each other and know they are The One (platonic).
I just love platonic love so much. It’s one of my favorite kinds of love to explore. And I think Rose and Shane have so much potential in their relationship. They both grew up in the public eye and remained there into their adult lives. I just love the idea of them finding each other and being like “oh. You. You understand.”
And no one else has any goddamn idea what they’re talking about. They could not possibly seem more different on the surface. He is the most hockey boy alive and she is one letter shy of an EGOT. If he led any more of a jock-centric existence he would have flunked out of 11th grade math. Meanwhile she’s spent her whole life doing Drama Club: The Extreme Version. The only things they should have in common are the fact that they are excruciatingly talented and also the two most beautiful people alive.
But they are both like. This is the only person who understands me. My soulmate. When we are buried it shall be in adjoining graves.
And everyone is like. Oh awesome. So you’re dating right.
And they’re like. No. Why would you ask us that.
I want them to have the most beautiful and bewildering bond to ever hit TMZ headlines. Rose Landry does one of those interviews where they have you reveal what the last text message you sent was and it was to Shane Hollander. His contact was saved as Soulmate ❤️ and the text was “Every single day I wake up and thank God for letting us be alive at the same time. You are the best thing to ever happen to me” (Shane had texted her the most level 9000 bitch thing she had ever seen in her goddamn life and she was consumed by violent love for him. His text is not included in the interview.) Shane Hollander goes viral 9 times a year for being caught carrying Rose Landry in his strong strong arms. (Rose does not know what the point is in being best friends with one of the greatest athletes to ever live if she can’t bully him into carrying her places whenever she doesn’t feel like walking). Every single awards show that has not conflicted with a Metros game for the past year has resulted in 57 photographs of them hanging off of each other on some red carpet, looking devastatingly beautiful and utterly enamored with each other. (Rose knows that man does not have a life outside of her and Ilya and hockey. He is coming to the Tony’s with her or so help her god. She cannot take another red carpet without him being there to mutter an ongoing bitch monologue when only she can hear. He’s better than podcasts.)
And everyone’s like. Okay. So. So you’re dating right.
Regarding your post on the variations between their sexual relationship from AU to AU.
yes I know you didn’t do Sochi yet but someone did bring up the 2015 playoffs from snapping birch and you justifiably ran with it so that’s the current situation. Also fascinated by Ilya “Consent King” Rozanov (or whatever the fandom calls him) being stuck constantly displaying public affection to Shane who Ilya has to be convinced hates him by this point
Legit Everlark’s Real or Not Real method better step up for Shane and Ilya
THE MEMES ARE MULTIVERSAL
The only way Shane Hollander is watching that movie franchise is if they cast Rose Landry in it. He doesn’t even know the method is an option. Someone help those boys
How many answered asks do u have and how many draft posts?
So I have no idea how to check how many asks I’ve actually answered, but I have 151 drafts in my shameful graveyard of unfinished asks and 933 asks in my inbox that I have not begun to answer yet. If you ever sent me an ask that I did not answer please know it was not from lack of trying
i think one of my favorite things about your heated rivalry au’s is that in each and every one of them scott hunter is a slave to the narrative. he is being dragged around by the plot against his will while his bestie carter vaughn is actively writing himself into the story. that man is giving himself an essential role in the epic ✨hollanov hockey romance coming of age novel✨ and no one can stop him
(well, excluding the child star crash out au, but, let’s be so for real, if the internet didn’t latch on to the idea that he was shane hollander’s disrespectful bisexual lover he still would’ve made himself relevant. i can see him playing scott hunter’s guru on allyship or something)
anyway i can’t wait to see what the man does in snapping birch. carter vaughn is the ally of all time. the only reason he didn’t call for the boycott himself is because he needed a national audience and a stage for the show he’s planning to put on
(love love love, all your writing btw. your character analysis is tea, the plot + themes are so well done, and the feels are the perfect balance of light and heavy. so thank you so much for sharing your work <<<3)
In Every Universe I will subject Scott Hunter to Hollanov against his will.
It is one of my favorite running bits. Scott is never hanging out with those two by choice. His wagon is chained forcibly to their clown car and he cannot unhitch. Like Jesus fucking Christ he’ll do it but he will not do it with grace. He wants to be less involved in their life.
Obviously I Shan’t Say about Carter Vaughn in snapping birch but that man ABSOLUTELY WROTE HIMSELF INTO THE NARRATIVE in the sochi outing au. He was told in no uncertain terms “do not leave your dorm room and do not speak to the media” and within fifteen minutes he was out there on the front lawn with the eyes of the state glaring inexorably down and what appeared to be every camera in Russia pointed in his direction as he announced, “you know I. I don’t think I knew what true love was until I saw Shane and Ilya together” with fuckin’ J.J. standing next to him, pupils the size of dimes, nodding along and saying, “they inspire me daily with their quiet dignity and uncompromising bravery in the face of adversity” while Scott Hunter stands behind them both having never been less okay in his entire life blowing out a slow breath and saying “that. Wow. You both just said. All of it. I can’t even think of what to add.”
Carter could have just stayed in his fuckin room but instead he goddamn bodied his role in the greatest gay hockey love story of the ages. He is so historically relevant very suddenly and all of it is his own doing. He has never been more stressed out in his entire life. His insides are liquid. His pulse is so high that his fitness tracker advised him to seek medical attention. He still has to compete in the fucking Olympics
This is somewhat of a strange question, so feel free to completely ignore it, but I wanted to ask how Hollonov's physical/sexual relationship changes in your AUs? It's one of the aspects of canon that I find the most intriguing. The way the fandom (notably fanfiction) isn't "adding" smut into a different genre or relationship given the source material are originally Romance novels and the way that impacts the conversations held around/about the smut.
Anyway~ specifically Snapping Birch though I have fallen deep into the brain worms about your Sochi Outing!AU and the contrast in where these outings take place in their timeline is ✨delicious✨. Bc they're already together in SB, just not public, and the fallout is so sudden while they're apart physically, are they able to reestablish a sense of normalcy via their physical contact w/ eo during the current run of the story? (I say current bc I'm sure the actual lawsuits that would come out of these things IRL would span months if not years.)
I know Ilya is desperately trying to keep Shane from physically imploding (at least at night while they sleep) lol, but as so much of their ability to communicate throughout the HR timeline IS based in their sexual rship, the fact that they kinda can't (for so! Many! Reasons! Stamina and nerves, especially, but also that the Hollanders, their lawyer?, + Scott & Hayden are in the vicinity ALWAYS) I imagine is deeply stressful & they probably haven't even thought about it?? I know we can't find out directly given the fic itself follows an outside POV (and what a terrible idea it would be to share that in-universe via social media or something!!), but therein is the beauty of being able to pick your brain directly!
For Sochi, it's the complete opposite: they weren't really talking to each other (not entirely estranged as we don't get that 6 month gap as in canon, just not being particularly communicative w/ eo for reasons that are obvious to themselves but completely unknown to the other!) but now, they're basically forced together! They're Hockey Romeo and Juliet, baby!! But they think they're tricking each other!!! Are they at all able to get past that initially? Especially since, at least in canon w/o THIS level of pressure, they're usually like magnets. Do they continue hooking up but now with the absolute mindfuck of "we're nothing to each other!" completely muddied with their feelings for eo coming to light so much sooner than they do in canon??
And lmk if you'd prefer if I broke these asks up so you can answer about the AUs separately! Ty 🥰
Shane and Ilya’s physical/sexual dynamic is something that definitely changes between my AUs.
The sex has to be plot-relevant for me, and I don’t mean that in like, a puritanical, “there shan’t be any acknowledgement of blowjobs Where The Lord Can See” kind of way. Like. I feel like a really big criticism I see of sex scenes existing in media is “that’s not plot relevant” and then half the time the sex scene was plot relevant. You. You don’t actually care about plot relevance. You’re just mad that someone was having sex on TV.
I mean it more in the sense that my personal writing philosophy is that everything in your story should be doing something. There are no free riders. If you bring something up, it should be for a reason. If a scene isn’t furthering something, then you’re wasting narrative space.
And sex has its place in story telling. Stories are about people. Some people have sex. Like. It’s a common part of the human experience. It’s okay to talk about it and show it.
If a couple is having sex, then how they handle sex with each other informs and is informed by their relationship. So how I decide the sex is being handled depends on the exact relationship dynamics I see happening at a particular time in a particular story. It also depends on if the sex is relevant to anything else in the plot. Sometimes it is.
You didn’t actually ask about the child star crashout summer au, but I’m gonna bring that up because it’s actually the best example of what I mean by “the sex should be plot relevant.” The fact that Shane and Ilya were having specifically disrespectful gay freak sex is extremely plot relevant.
In the child star crashout summer au, Shane and Ilya have done plenty of dom/sub, freak sex kink shit together. And like. As a threshold issue, part of the reason why I part of the reason why I picked that dynamic was because I do see evidence in canon that they either have that kind of relationship or could be fulfilled by it. Like. Ilya seems to like giving orders and being in control when they’re together and Shane seems to like letting him do both in canon. That’s just my personal read on it.
I can also see them both being fulfilled by this kind of relationship based off of how I personally interpret their backstories. Because Shane is Sidney Crosby RPF someone who was thrust into a position of leadership and scrutiny at a very young age.
Being a generational talent in Canadian youth hockey is not a casual after school activity. Shane’s likely been a public figure since he was 12 years old. He’s likely been at some point the captain of every single team he’s been on, especially as he got older. The pressure on him to lead the team to success would have been extreme. The scrutiny and unwarranted criticism he would have faced as an Asian boy in a leadership role would have also been extreme. And Shane’s probably been told that he needs to be a role model for kids who look like him since he was a kid. There would have been a constant, suffocating demand for absolute perfection out of him.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Shane thrives in leadership roles. He’s successful for a reason. That man is an amazing captain. But it’s not uncommon for people in high pressure decision-making positions to enjoy not having to make decisions in the bedroom. I can see him wanting to just have a moment where he can just shut his brain off and not have to be The Guy That Decides Things.
But where Shane’s childhood was marked by crushing responsibility, Ilya’s childhood was marked by a lack of control.
He was a child in an extremely abusive household who probably spent all of his time in intensive training. He had almost no control over his own life. He got in the cars people told him to and did what they said when they arrived at a destination that wasn’t disclosed to him in advance. He didn’t get to make decisions about his own life or future. So I can see him being fulfilled by a dynamic where he gets to be the one who’s finally in control.
In short, I do think that kind of relationship is at least a possible interpretation of canon, I don’t think it’s the only interpretation of canon and I’m seriously not trying to be the kink police over here but I do think the fandom sometimes executes it in a way that gets really racially weird and we should. Probably not do tha— *gunshots*
But the reason why I picked that relationship for the child star crashout goes beyond “it’s a possible interpretation of the source material.” The type of relationship Shane and Ilya had is fundamental to the fic’s plot.
First, it’s a huge factor driving the conflict.
I want to be clear: there’s absolutely nothing wrong or bad or embarrassing about being into x kink. As long as everything is safe, sane, and consensual, there is no moral dynamic to sex. You do not get bonus points for being vanilla or a freak. Just. Just do whatever the fuck you want to do as long as both people actually want to do it and are doing it safely. It does not fucking matter.
I feel like I have weirdly strong opinions on like. The theory and philosophy of sex. Like I think we as a society are so weird about sex. Sometimes I leave my tumblr bubble and venture into the wider internet and see the most pointless discourse. I remember once watching this short film where the entire moral dilemma was that a couple was on a first date and the woman suddenly jumps the man with “hey do you have any interest in maybe doing a consensual non consent roleplay with me, person you met four and a half minutes ago.”
And it was portrayed around this Big Dilemma of How Would I Be Sure You Really Wanted It and What If You Said It Was Rape Later and I was so bewildered by the dilemma of it all. Like Jesus Christ he needs to learn what a safe word is and she needs to learn to not try to negotiate her fucking kink list before the bread arrives. Like fuck sake maybe wait for the third date for this. And there was this entire thing about how she had a “””contract””” so he could have proof it was consensual after and I was like “well she could sign that shit and still revoke consent at any time so it proves absolutely nothing and also if you are worried she would lie about it after then you don’t have the the kind of relationship built up to be able to safely do kink sex shit. Jesus Christ where is the waiter can they fucking order already.” It was just. There was no dilemma. There was a clear correct answer to the entire scenario. And he set the contract on fire with the table candle at the end and I was like “you’re INSIDE.” The entire thing was nonsense.
There is a point to that slightly random aside and it’s that I personally think a lot of society assigns weird moral stigmas around even mildly kinky sex. So often I see people like “well have you considered that they were doing this PERVERSION [insert random and morally neutral sex act that I couldn’t care less about as long as everyone involved wanted to be doing it and could and did give full and knowing consent].” Like. Why do we care.
Shane is not just outed in the child star crashout summer au. He is outed as someone who enthusiastically engaged in freak sex acts in a submissive role. And like. I’m gonna be so for real with you, I have not actually decided what those freak sex acts were. If I ever write this one I’m gonna have to go on urban dictionary or some shit and figure out what the fuck he and Ilya were doing for seven years.
The fact that he was outed for enjoying disrespectful kink sex is one of the reasons why the NHL is so emboldened to push him out. It’s one of the reasons why so many people are still laughing at him after he’s hate crimed on fucking tv. They have decided he did something bad, something to be ashamed of, when he didn’t. He didn’t do anything wrong. The fact that his sex was specifically disrespectful kink sex serves to catalyze the conflict in a way that admitting to vanilla sex doesn’t. And so much of the rest of the fic is dedicated to unpacking the inherent injustice in that fact.
Shane does not do anything wrong. But people act like he did. The sex is inherent in that.
Second, the type of sex is meant to be illustrative of the trust and respect between him and Ilya.
Like. As a baseline matter, you should not be having sex with anyone you don’t trust and respect but you should definitely not be having intense kink sex with them if there’s no trust and respect.
Shane and Ilya’s relationship is fundamentally a good one in this fic. They’re not perfect, but it’s still good. It’s healthy when they’re not fleeing the fucking building from each other. They only have freak gay sex with each other because they fundamentally trust the other and so are able to do it safely. Because their relationship is not just made up of gay freak sex. They’ve spent seven years stealing moments together. They’ve been actually talking with each other and connecting on a very human level and then running from each other after because oh fuck that just became sort of super real didn’t it oh fuck I’m in love fuck fuck fuck.
But there’s also another layer of trust needed to have that kind of dynamic when you consider it through the lens of Canadian junior hockey culture.
I’ve talked about this at length, but Canadian junior hockey culture is very sex obsessed. It is very misogynistic. It is very homophobic. Being on the receiving end of the sexual act is something contemptible. Women are talked about as disgusting objects to shove your dick and they were totally moaning for it, what a whore.
Shane would have heard that kind of talk from a very young age. He was most likely 13 years old when he was drafted to his junior hockey league team. If we’re following Sidney crosby’s career, he would have been 14 when he started playing games with them. Junior hockey teams go up to fucking age 20. Imagine being 14 and hearing the adult man you share a locker room with discuss what this filthy, disgusting slut let him do to her this weekend. No, he didn’t catch her name.
Shane having disrespectful gay sex with Ilya puts him in the position he was told from a young age is contemptible. It makes you disgusting. It makes you subhuman. You should look down on people like that. And Shane knew a lot of people believed that.
He was only able to have that kind of sex because he felt safe enough with Ilya to know that Ilya wouldn’t think less of him after. He knew Ilya wasn’t going to go around and talk about him to their fucking work colleagues like he was some pathetic, desperate, disgusting whore. They had a good relationship. They trusted each other. It’s only when it’s exposed to the scrutiny of the masses that Shane’s relationship with Ilya is treated like something he should be ashamed of.
Which feeds into the third thing the sex does, which is fuel the stakes and fears of Ilya’s part of the plot.
I talked about this in another post, but Ilya’s seriously worried Shane is going to end up having sex with randos during his crashout. It is less about being jealous of Shane finding someone else and more about being scared that Shane’s going to get hurt. Ilya knows him very well. They didn’t just jump in the freak saddle on day dot. The trust came first and then they started experimenting.
That kind of trust and safety and respect is so very far from guaranteed out of some random fucking guy who’s jazzed to be getting a crack at Shane Hollander, confirmed sex freak.
Shane’s in a very bad, very self destructive, very desperate mindset right now. He’s not in any kind of mindset to be safely making healthy freak sex decisions. Ilya’s so desperate to find Shane because he’s worried that Shane’s going to be seriously hurt before he can find him.
This turned into a much longer aside than I intended. Long story short, every thing I do in my stories is meant to be somehow narratively fulfilling, including sex. It’s meant to carry plot weight. So it changes with the plot.
I actually already have an ask in progress about the sochi outing au that’s currently confined to my shameful graveyard of unfinished asks, so I won’t discuss that here. That post will hopefully escape its tomb soon. It’s pretty long, because like the child star crashout summer au, I think sex and how Shane and Ilya handle it are very plot relevant to that fic. It’s less so with snapping birch.
I’m not saying sex is irrelevant to snapping birch, it’s definitely relevant, it’s just less central.
Because I don’t think they’re actually having all that much sex.
It’s not actually due to lack of opportunity. No one is staying with Shane and Ilya right now. Scott Hunter is not once again doomed to share a wall with Hollanov. Hayden Pike is not actually the token ally at gay nhl slumber party because gay nhl slumber party was a lie. It never happened. On god, I am lying to you constantly in this fic.
Insofar as living arrangements, Shane and Ilya are at the cottage right now. Originally, I figured that everyone else would be at David and Yuna’s cottage, but the more I think about it, the more I think that David’s iCloud drop doxxed every address he’s ever had. But I can see Shane’s cottage being spared as long as David never had anything mailed there, which I’ve decided he didn’t. So Shane and Ilya can safely be at the cottage. But there is then the question of where to put everyone else.
So I Have Added A Cottage.
I think it’s canon that Shane owns that entire lake and the surrounding land. The documentary thing said it was a private lake. If it’s not canon that he owns that entire space, it’s true for the sake of snapping birch.
I’ve decided that Shane and Rose Landry bestied for the restied so fucking hard that they decided not long after the break up that they simply had to build Rose a cottage of her own on Shane’s land. He was doodling Ilya’s name in his notebook by that point and already building a battle strategy for how to Cottage His Man. He wanted his cottage to one day be just a private space where they could be alone and comfortable together and also to have sex with Ilya on every available flat surface which made having house guests awkward.
But also he shared a soul with his homegirl and they felt strongly that she should have the option to be Cottaged herself. On a spiritual level, they need to be bitches together in the Canadian wilderness. Shane’s homosexuality and unfettered lust for a specific man could NOT come between their platonic soulmate bond.
So they decided she’d simply have to be his cottage neighbor. Then he could hopefully one day have oh. A man, any man, Shane definitely doesn’t have a particular man in mind, at the cottage with him and Rose could be at the other side of the lake, spared from ever accidentally seeing Shane have sex against a window but still close enough that she can try to drown Shane in his own lake every summer as an expression of their zany sibling love.
He got the building permits stupid fast because everyone loves Shane Hollander. He and Rose banged out the design with an architect and hired builders to make it real.
Ground may or may not have been broken before Ilya ever got his invite to the cottage. Shane. Is not sharing this detail with him.
He stopped building when he had Ilya spend the summer with him so there’d be no risk of a random construction worker seeing them together and then restarted it after they both left. It wrapped up before the leak happened. Ilya may or may not have assumed that this was just a guest cottage and not a specific guest’s cottage and Shane. Will one day admit to him that he had it built for Rose.
So Shane and Ilya have the cottage to themselves. Everyone else is staying in Rose Landry’s idyllic lakeside cottage she got by being soulmates with a gay man with a fetish for real estate. She is winning at life. And so Scott Hunter is safe from ever again hearing Shane and Ilya in the throes of passion, ever. He is still haunted. Those hotel walls were so thin.
They’re definitely coming in and out of the cottage a lot, they have to meet with Shane and Ilya regularly to consult on the pr campaign, but Ilya’s kind of bottle necking access to Shane right now. He’s imposed limits. This visit could be a text message or also could have just. Not happened. Go away.
Also, not to have another aside, but I do want to say—I feel like from the background posts, Ilya comes off like he is assuming a lot of the decision-making authority in snapping birch and especially when it comes to Shane. I want to be super clear that their relationship dynamic right now is specifically because of they’re on defcon 9000 and should not be considered a reflection on Shane and Ilya’s normal relationship dynamic.
They’re both adults. They have equal decision-making authority in this relationship. Neither of them is The Head Of The Household. Ilya is not in charge of Shane and doesn’t get to do shit like actually impose hard limits on who has access to him.
Right now, Shane is just in such bad straits that he does not have the bandwidth handle this situation the way he usually can. He is coming off of a five month nightmare where the guys who he thought of as his brothers tried to fucking kill him. His body is physically wrecked after the stress it’s been under this season. And he went straight from that into Hell As Designed For Shane Hollander. Every teenage girl on the fucking planet is reading his dad’s fucking therapy emails right now and then making sad girl edits about Shane on TikTok because of it.
Shane’s well past 72 hours of continued wakefulness because he is so medically unwell about what’s going on that he physically cannot get himself to sleep. Like. His decision making abilities are impaired right now through no fault of his own. So Shane’s aware he needs to lean on his partner while he’s trying to get his head together. Ilya stepped up to take the brunt of the load, and by now he’s established himself as someone who is very, very good at knowing what Shane actually needs and how to best help him.
It’s less that Ilya has real authority right now and more that everyone’s deferring to him because they think he has the best ideas about how to get through to Shane. Shane is letting Ilya assume a lot more authority than he typically does because he knows he’s bad enough right now that he can’t do this himself. But if Ilya hits on something that Shane isn’t actually okay with, he has and will continue to override Ilya. Ilya and how he’s interacting with Shane in this shouldn’t be read to mean that he’s the Head Of The Household Who Decides Things And Shane’s His Demure Wife. Shane’s just on such little sleep right now that he legally should not be allowed behind the wheel of a car. When you hit that level of no sleep, your cognitive abilities suffer severely. Shane’s processing power is physically limited at the moment. He’s letting Ilya take the wheel until he gets his feet back under him.
I think Shane and Ilya both struggle with being vulnerable around people who aren’t each other. They don’t like being hurt where other people can see them—Shane because of the pressures and trauma from his experiences in growing up in junior hockey, Ilya because of his family’s abuse. Shane doesn’t want to have any more breakdowns in front of fucking Scott Hunter. He is repressing the fuck out of absolutely everything happening to him right now and the repression gets worse with any increase of the number of people who are physically around to see him.
Ilya clocked this fairly immediately and decided that people needed to stay the fuck out of Shane’s cottage as much as possible. They have to be there sometimes for the sake of the strike. But Ilya set the norm early that they should spend most of their time at the other property. They need to call before coming over. And if Ilya says that they need to leave, then they need to fucking leave. He’s trying to carve out a space as private and as safe as possible so that Shane can 1) finally fucking relax enough to sleep jfc and 2) ideally stop trying to Project A Purposeful Zen and actually let himself process the pain of what’s happening right now.
So they have the space and privacy to be having sex if they want to be. No one’s staying with them. No one’s walking in on them. No one’s even going to the cottage unless they call Ilya in advance and get his permission to drive over.
I just don’t think what’s happening right now is super conducive to either of them being in the mood for sex.
They’re both in the torture matrix. Shane specifically hasn’t slept since like. The night of the 11th. It is the 15th. Shane could not possibly feel less sexy if he tried right now. He sort of feels like he got ran over by a truck.
I think they have had some sex, just not much. They’re not all over each other right now. They’ve got too many other things going on, and Shane’s just. Physically unwell right now.
I think they had sex when Shane was going into night 3 of no sleep and it was more of like. An attempt at a homebrew sleeping aid than anything.
Night 1, no one slept, they were too busy trying to secure Dave’s bank accounts and put a stop to all the identity theft and then suddenly there’s some very angry NHL people at their doorstep ready to drag them into a meeting with Crowell. Night 2, they didn’t actually realize how dire the sleep problem was yet. They had Shane take a medically ill-advised amount of melatonin to try to get him to sleep because of how stressed he was and figured that would knock him right out. Then Shane’s battery-acid levels of anxiety burned through that shit and suddenly it’s 3 am and they’re finding him in the front drive changing the oil of Kip Grady’s fucking rental car. Kips pretty sure they don’t like it if you do that, actually.
Night 3, they were seriously worried. Shane had failed to sleep every time he gave into one of Ilya’s attempts to cajole him into a nap. He was just as wired as he had been for the last three days going into the night, and he showed no signs of being able to sleep. On like, a purely biological level, sex produces and releases hormones that encourages sleep. I think he and Ilya decided to try having sex on that night in hopes that the endorphins hit would let Shane actually fall asleep after.
It wasn’t anything crazy. It was more about feeling close to each other and getting release so Shane could hopefully sleep. They’re not exactly consulting the kama sutra right now.
I also think that Shane liked Ilya’s tweet from the morning of the 15th where he told the entire world that Shane didn’t have to talk to the internet unless he wanted to, which was maybe never, and everyone would have to find a way to be okay with that because they were being fucking freaks about Shane so much that he immediately tried to suck Ilya’s dick about it. It was everything Shane wanted to hear in the moment. He was unspeakably fucking in love with that man. Take your pants off.
It resulted in the weirdest relationship negotiation of Ilya’s life where he was like Okay But If I Say Yes After Will You Please Let Me Hold You In Our Bed While We Try For Sleep Again. Please For Me My Shane I Need You To Sleep More Than Anything Else In The World Right Now.
They did not actually have four hour sex on the night of the 13th. That was another lie. On God, I am lying to you always.
Effectively, Ilya did really go do his night of the 13th Twitter grenade toss-a-thon from the cottage while everyone else was in Rose’s the normal guest cottage that had no specific guest in mind. He was effectively already outed, everyone basically knew it was him already and the NHL low key went and fucking confirmed it with the suspension, but Ilya was never actually named in the leak. Him confirming that he was shane’s boyfriend would be the closest thing either of them ever got to coming out. Shane did not want his fucking mom vetting those tweets in advance. It was the only shred of choice that either of them would get. So Ilya got full creative expression on what he wanted to tell the world.
Like. It wasn’t actually full creative expression. He got permission from Andrea first to imply that Roger Crowell called them a slur and then to also lie about the fact that he was revealing that detail against the advice of counsel. It was not against the advice of counsel. Andrea okayed that.
I’ve explained it in other posts, but they’ve decided to lean into the sex appeal of it all for several reasons I won’t rehash here. Shane wants to shut his own organs down over it, but they decided that the best move right now is to allude to Sex And The Fact That He Has It as part of the PR strategy. So Ilya was on instructions to drop in a few references to their sex life. Shane knew that was going to happen. He had very reluctantly okayed it. But beyond that, Ilya got to pick what he was going to say.
Shane felt strongly that the world could have done without Fun Facts About The 2011 All Stars Game.
Before Ilya left for the other property, Shane said to him I Trust You.
And Ilya replied. No You Do Not.
And Shane said. No I Do Not. You Are Going To Say Something Fucking Crazy.
To which Ilya replied:
Yes.
Because it was true.
He was so unspeakably angry. He was ready to chuck his fucking grenades. He hopes they land in the lap of the asshole who approved that page six article.
Ilya threw his grenades. Shane immediately fucking drove over to have strong words about why he picked Those Grenades Specifically. After he got there, Yuna called them to say that they decided to have them take a break from social media posting so they could gauge the public’s reaction to Ilya’s opening move. How about they start heading back over to the guest house and they can game plan next steps—
And Ilya said Oh No Yuna We Are Going Through A Tunnel You Are Breaking Up. Oh No We Can’t Hear You. You Want Us To Stay At The Cottage Alone For A Few Hours While You All Leave Us Very Alone? Okay We Will Do That.
And then he hung up.
And Hayden, who was listening to that shit over the speaker phone, had a thought which he’s had a lot these last few months, which is Oh God They’re Touching Each Other Again Aren’t They. They Do Not Need To Do That As Much As They Do. I Wish I Was Dead.
Because he had somehow glitched into a timeline where every time he turned a corner that Awful Fucking Man was cradling his best buddy in the whole word’s face between reverent palms and kissing his freckles with open devotion.
Which Hayden did not fucking need to see at all.
Honestly I think Shane and Ilya were mostly just talking. They hadnt had much time to breathe since they were outed. They’d spent almost every second leading up to that point with other people. Like, they got a couple moments alone, like when Ilya first arrived at the house, but most of their time had been filled with dealing with this bullshit.
Ilya mostly just wanted time to talk with Shane now that they were in the worst case scenario. Shane was visibly not taking this well and was also plainly not processing anything about what was going on. They mostly just talked. I never fully decided whether they had any sex at all during those four hours—I could see them doing it because they were seeking physical comfort from each other, but I could also see them just not being in the mood. But Ilya wasn’t doing any weird sex shit to get his phone back from Shane. Shane can’t confiscate his phone from him to begin with. They’re both adults. Shane’s not in charge of him.
Hayden was the first one to introduce the idea that Shane and Ilya were having sex. They decided he Had to reply to a direct @ from Cliff Marleau, the guy who expanded their strike from Literally Two People to an entire team, and thought that his reply implying that Shane and Ilya were together was in line with their previously discussed strategy of Wink Winking at the sex and fit with Hayden and Ilya’s cats-and-dogs dynamic.
But when Shane saw it, he said, Okay. Hey Let’s Make A New Rule. Let’s Never Give The Internet Any Kind Of Hints As To When I May Be Actively Having Sex Ever Again. If They Have A Date And Time, Then They Have Too Much Information.
But by that point, the damage was done. The implication was already out there. They decided to let Ilya address it with his own wink wink and then follow the new rule going forward.
Even during the time leading up to outing, Shane and Ilya’s ratio of like, times they had sex relative to how much time they were spending together was at a record low. They just haven’t been having a lot of sex with each other lately.
Both because of how much stress they were going through killing the mood, and also because Shane’s been struggling physically these last few months. Like. Extreme exertion fucks up your muscles. He’s been in a lot of pain. He’s not gonna turn around and have acrobatic gay sex.
They’ve definitely still been having sex these last few months. They like sex. They like having it with each other. It helps them feel close to each other and comforted by the other.
But Ilya doesn’t want to have sex with Shane if he’s in too much pain and too exhausted to move and Shane does not super want to be having sex with Ilya in that case either. Like. The complications of what’s been going on in their lives have just had a noticeable impact on their sex life. They’re not having as much sex. When they do have it, it’s not as rough or intense as they may have otherwise wanted it. And that’s all more about the physical impacts of the Metros’ abuse than any kind of lack of desire for each other.
And that happens sometimes in a relationship. Sometimes the things happening in life means a couple’s sex life takes a backseat. Shane and Ilya both get that.
I think they still like being physically close with each other. They’re not exactly very touchy-feely with their friends. They satisfy most of their desires for physical comfort through the other person. They’ve still been doing that. It’s just been less through sex and more through non-sexual forms of intimacy.
I think Ilya started introducing massages after the punishment shifts started in an attempt to alleviate some of the pain. Shane hasn’t returned the favor on those very often—less out of lack of desire and more out of like. Physical inability. He’s been in a lot of pain and felt kind of shitty about how little he could offer Ilya like, physically, until Ilya picked up on it and made it clear how profoundly little he wanted Shane to be gritting his teeth through anything they do together for Ilya’s sake. Ilya’s actively upset at the thought, actually. Ilya does not care about getting fucking massages or blowjobs or anything else for that matter. He only ever wants people to touch him if they want to be touching him.
I think they’ve been showering together since the outing specifically. This is in part because Ilya is Constantly Afraid that Shane’s going to have a heart attack or stroke from how much stress his body is under and doesn’t want Shane to collapse and hit his head and fucking die because he took a shower alone. Ilya wants to be in there is he can Physically Catch Shane if he takes a spill. But it’s also because they’re both extremely afraid and stressed and find comfort in being able to be close with and take care of each other, even if it’s just like, washing each other’s hair.
They’ve been spending a lot of time in bed together in the last couple of days but that’s less for sex reasons and more because like six years ago Ilya watched that episode of mythbusters where they proved that just Physically Lying Down has a discernible health benefit for your body even if you can’t actually sleep so he’s been after Shane constantly to just lie down and see if he feels any better even if sleep isn’t on the table. And Shane fucking hates this, because if he lies down, he Thinks and Contemplates what’s happening to him and he cannot do that on a medical level. He needs to go build a fucking deck chair, actually. So Ilya has to both harass him into lying down and then lie down with him because the second he turns his back that awful fucker will be Up and Wandering again. The relationship negotiations around this point are Tense.
And Also Ilya’s Been Tenderly Caressing His Shane’s Beautiful Face And Kissing His Freckles With Religious Reverence Seemingly Every Time That Hayden Pike Is There To See It. They Do Not Need To Touch That Much.
In sum, Shane and Ilya are not exactly in a dry spell, but they are in an Only Slightly Damp Spell. Their sex life has taken a dip. And that fact is meant to interface with the public’s obsession with their sex lives. It’s a source of painful, dramatic irony and it reinforces the unreliability of the internet and it’s assumptions.
Like. Imagine you are going through the worst goddamn time of your entire life. You’ve been in a lot of physical pain off and on for months. You’re under such excruciating stress that it’s causing discernible medical complications. It’s been bad enough that it’s sort of killed your previously very active sex life with your extremely hot boyfriend who you love with everything in you. And not only has your boyfriend been understanding of the fact that you’re not in a physical state to be having the same kind of sex that you usually have with him, but he’s been so good about it that he’s never complained, never asked for it, and usually waits for you to initiate it because he doesn’t want to ever risk you forcing yourself through it despite physical discomfort for his sake. It’s probably the worst your sex life has ever been, but you know that you’ll get through it together.
And while that’s all happening, you know that somewhere out in the world, someone is posting to the Internet something along the lines of, “I bet Ilya Rozanov is balls deep in Shane Hollander right now. God those two probably never climb off of each other.”
although most of my experience is in acting I do have some writing/directing experience as well and if I was given an infinite budget and told to adapt fanfics, it would Absolutely be your hr fics. I have I very visual imagination and it’s just so Clear in my head. if I was giving a budget of 5 dollars and a corn chip I would still choose to adapt your hr fics
If I could give you the 5 dollars and a corn chip I would in an instant
#my REALLY unpopular hr opinion is that I personally like it when Shane and Ilya are on different teams
OKAY I'm glad you said this bc I was starting to feel a little insane about it lol, this blog is responsible for 98% of my understanding of HR sooo my perspective may be skewed in your favor, but I just FEEL like Shane and Ilya would never be happy being on the same team. Like where's the competition. Where's the back-and-forth. Idk having them end up in the same team just feels like painfully uninteresting even beyond the whole "hubby's readymade friend group" thing like you said. Shane would be so bored. He and Ilya together would destroy every team without trying, that's barely even playing hockey at that point, which is the thing that he loves.
Honestly I feel like getting to psychosexually torture each other with hockey is a huge source of their attraction to each other.
Like. They like being rivals. They like that they’re the only one who can really keep up with the other. They like being the only ones who can give the other a real fight. And they like actually giving each other that fight. All of that goes away if they’re on the same team. I low key think they’d start chewing at the drywall without the competitive outlet.
I want to be clear, this is all my own personal preference and read on the characters. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting them to play on the same team; I just don’t personally want that. This isn’t any kind of not judgment on wanting them to play together.
I personally like the idea of Hollanov spending most of their careers going after each other with the most sexually charged competition in the history of hockey and the rest of the league is like. Do you. Do you have to do this where we have to see it. Like POV you’re a top tier hockey player living in the wrong time in history because you’re being choked out at every awards’ ceremony by two fucking assholes’ idea of foreplay.
I can see them maybe deciding to join the same team and launch the Husband Line when they’re in the last few years of their career and trying to squeeze one more Stanley Cup out of their careers. But I personally think they like competing with each other. I think they like having a rival who makes them fight for it. The fact that the other never lets up drives them to be constantly improving themselves.
Like. I fully understand, it’s hard to do long distance, but they’re rich enough to just fly private and still spend as much time together as possible. I will forgive them the environmental impact. They can plant trees. And, as many other people have pointed out in my comments and asks, it’s a lot easier to do long distance after the relationship goes public. They’ll have more freedom and flexibility to go see each when they aren’t having to come up with excuses as to where the fuck they are.
By the time Shane moves to Ottawa, they realistically only have 10ish years left in their career maximum—and only 7-9 years in separate cities if we do decide they spend the last few years They’re in the kind of profession where they’re tapping out young. Most people are retiring in their 30s. The oldest active player right now is 41. The oldest active player in history was 52. And he is the only nhl player to ever make it past his 40s. They’re going to have decades to spend all their time together. I personally think they can make long distance work for a few years and then climb into each other’s skin after they retire.
I also frankly just kinda think it’s healthier for their relationship if they have lives and support structures outside of each other.
I understand that a lot of the appeal of heated rivalry is that it’s an all-consuming, I-love-you-to-the-point-of-destruction kind of love. But uh. It can be an all-consuming love without actually consuming all. You can let them have friends who aren’t the other.
I just like them having their own teams and friendships and careers. I like them having their own lives. It doesn’t mean they love each other any less. I personally think having other relationships not tied up in the other can make for a little bit of a stronger and healthier love. Like. If they’re experiencing a rough patch, there’s never a concern that the other is only sticking around because they share a job and a friend group and every other aspect of their lives and no one knows who’s taking what in the divorce. You have options for happiness outside of the other person. It’s just that the other person is the one who makes you happiest. You pick to be with them again and again. It’s never about lack of other options.
I’m not saying the relationships going to be unhealthy if they live and work together full time. I just think it’s a little more vulnerable to the possibility.
I don’t think they need to be on the same team to have a happy ending. That’s just me. I like them having their own careers.
