imagining shane hanging out with his parents and while he's away from his phone doing something with his dad a call comes in. yuna sees this and goes, "shane, someone's calling you!"
and shane says, "who is it?"
"lily!"
"oh." shane immediately sets aside what he's doing and walks over, saying to his mom, "that's ilya."
yuna looks at him in confusion as he picks up his phone. "why is ilya saved as 'lily' in your phone?"
and shane looks at her, away, shrugs as if it's obvious and simply says, "I can't have ilya rozanov saved on my phone, mom" before answering the call with a, "hey, baby" and walking away.
leaving yuna (and david) standing shocked and, once again, shaken at how little they knew about their son and the layers of concealment he's had to operate under for years just to love who he loves.
Ok time for me to talk about one of my favourite unexplored areas in heated rivalry. And that is the specific Experience that Shane has of being the kind of player he is, as in being THE best and bringing in multiple cups, and playing for Montreal. Like. Like I cannot express to those who have never been near it what the hockey culture in Montreal is like. If you think Sidney Crosby is Canadas Beloved Darling, if he had done for Montreal what he did for Pittsburgh he genuinely would be a god. Like I’m not even kidding Montreal would start a new fucking religion if a hockey player ever did what Shane did for them in the books. THREE CUPS? Two of them back to back? After an over 15 year drought? They have the best hockey player in the world on their team? yeah statues are going up shrines are going up like he would be the fucking Pope of Montreal. Actually no he would be the goddamn Beyoncé of Montreal. Like I need you guys to go look up what the bell centre looks like when the habs play a home game. I need you to look up what it looks like when they play an away game and EVERYONE GOES AND WATCHES IN THE EMPTY ARENA. And they’re so loud it registers as a MINI EARTHQUAKE. The hockey fan culture in Montreal is truly unique in that it’s uniquely fucking insane and I would LOVE to see how that affects Shane seeing as he would be basically viewed as their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Like to Montreal he is the (hockey) messiah come again.
no ask just sending you oodles of compliments for your hollanov procedural AUs!
AW thank you so much!!!! I’m having so much fun writing it and reading the comments of everyone reading along the wips (and the finished works, I read all the comments even if I’m not able to reply to all!!) it’s been such a fun little project!! I’m so happy to see that people are vibing with my random idea!
(Leaving the link here in case anyone is confused)
The two Las Vegas POVs are so good to illustrate Ilya and Shane’s different levels of awareness of their own feelings. Ilya spends the entire night agonizing w Slavic anguish about how badly he wants Shane and how he needs to put distance NOW meanwhile Shane thinks he’s being soooo good at being casual and how it’s just sex w his rival and then gets to his room and only then does he go “oh we didn’t even kiss” and is horrified to discover that the fact upsets him.
All throughout their relationship Ilya is fighting himself and his demons PAINFULLY aware that he is losing the battle against his feelings for Hollander (the rooftop, Sochi, Vegas) and then he does a little bargain hoping it will be enough (tuna melt) meanwhile Shane is BREEZING through this, inadvertently moving their relationship forward by being his normal caring self, asking if he’s okay, about his family, about his home, etc. and just generally being a steady presence for Ilya. All the while UNAWARE that he had caught feelings.
Feelings don’t grow on him, they sucker punch him in the face one day.
Ilya is working all these subtle manipulations not to show his overwhelming feelings to Shane during the tuna melt, meanwhile he’s like “why do boyfriend? And why am I liking it? what is this???? why did I just caress his face and whisper his name lovingly???”
And even after Rose and Tampa, after he accepts his feelings, he is having Realizations. Like “oh my god I want to comfort him?!” “Oh my god I want him to be my boyfriend?!” or “oh my god I am in love?!”
Ilya has had the chance to fight back (and lose every time) but Shane always realizes when he’s neck deep and then decides to dive in further, the only way to go is onwards, he cannot fight these feelings, it’s too late, they aren’t “growing” they’ve been grown, they are an entire fucking forest. There’s no nipping this.
Meanwhile, Ilya is exhausted, axe in hand, unaware that every step brings him further into the forest. Until Shane meets him there like “oh, great, we are both here!” & Ilya is just like “well, fuck, yes, Shane, we’ve BEEN here for a while, that’s the problem” and Shane is like “it’s nice, we should stay :)”
exactly what you said in your tags. i’m a queer asian person, and if i had a white partner who reacted to me being upset after experiencing racism homophobia from a person in power at my job, the way ilya does after shane calls him to talk about what crowell said to him, i would seriously need to reevaluate that relationship. and i don’t think that’s what rachel reid was trying to do, which makes it all the more worse. the fact that ilya was mad at shane because this experience would probably make him not want to come out even more, like…. no fucking shit? if that’s what he just got told? but the narrative never frames ilya as wrong for it. it’s okay for people to fuck up and make mistakes, i like those stories, i like when characters aren’t perfect, but it feels so insulting to my intelligence to be accused of hating flawed characters when ilya is never framed as such in the narrative. shane is flawed, ilya is perfect and shane needs to get on board with his desire to come out. if tlg had been framed as a story where they’re both wrong and both need to learn how to communicate, that would’ve been one thing, but that’s very much not what happened.
THANK YOU
I feel like so much of the fandom has been saying “everyone get ready pls don’t hate Shane in season 2!!!” and I’m like “girl you need to stop me from hating ILYA”
And to be clear, I don’t hate Ilya. I love Ilya. And I don’t think I’m going to hate him in season 2 because I trust the show runners to fix. Whatever that bullshit was.
I hate how Ilya acts in the long game.
He is borderline cruel to Shane at times. And he exhibits a shocking lack of empathy towards Shane’s fears and concerns considering a hallmark of his character is how empathetic he is. In the long game, he is empathetic to everyone but Shane.
If the narrative had framed the conflict as a mutual communication issue that they needed to overcome together, I would have been so much happier with it. I do not want my characters to be perfect and I want them to struggle. I want them to experience conflict, including communication issues. Like, that’s a good conflict, especially in the context of a relationship narrative. But the narrative affirms again and again that Shane alone is the problem, and we know it is meant to, because the author herself says so.
Ilya is so dismissive of Shane’s concerns in every conversation. Take when he’s asking Shane to go to Ottawa after Shane was just *checks notes* abandoned his best friends of over ten years. Shane says they don’t have the cap space for him. Ilya asks how much money he needs. Shane says “no, it’s not about that, I want to be paid what I’m worth.” Ilya says “okay but consider you have a very rich husband to provide for you”
Like that is not what Shane just fucking said!!! A queer Asian man said “hey uh it’s unfair if I have to be paid extremely below my worth to have this job” and his white partner replied “don’t worry baby hubby will provide” like what the fuck??
But the narrative affirms Ilya’s view. Shane immediately laughs and agrees. He was wrong to be caught up in it to begin with.
Do you have any idea how destructive Shane’s move to Ottawa and subsequent pay cut must have been to his reputation? He went from the most respected captain in the nhl to a second fucking line center on His Husband’s Team getting paid less than any other player on a team that had never so much as even grazed the fucking Stanley cup. He must have looked fucking radioactive. No one even wants Shane Hollander anymore. He is lucky to even get to play. It is so callous and disrespectful and humiliating. Jesus fucking Christ, she did not have to write it that way.
Do you realize that nhl players can and have voluntarily taken pay cuts to make cap space?
Ilya himself could have said “i will take a pay cut so we can get you here in a way that doesn’t devalue you. We are merging our finances anyway, it does not matter whose name is on the check, we get the same money either way but I do not want you to lose any more respect than you already have after what your friends and the media just did to you.” Other players on the centaurs could have said “oh we all agreed to take a pay cut to even have a chance at Shane fucking Hollander on our team. I’d take a pay cut just to have Shane Hollander make eye contact with me. Thank you to the metros for fumbling the greatest player on your team we will NOT let this opportunity pass us by. Oh my god we’re going to win the Stanley cup.” The Centaurs management could have come out and said “hey we moved heaven and earth to renegotiate these contracts so we could afford Shane Hollander on this team. Absolutely everyone on this team is a trooper for doing this and it sucks that we have to cut anyone’s pay but we are all so committed to bringing the Stanley cup home that we decided to make it work.”
Again, NHL players regularly do this. It is an option and one the author could have found out about with a single fucking google search. It is built into the cap system. Players openly chose to be paid less than their worth because they believe getting a certain player makes their team a contender for the Cup. And no one talks about that fact like it is a devaluation of the players. The public knows that they are worth more money. The pay cut is because the nhl salary cap system is ass and their team cares enough to get that goddamn Cup.
Shane would still likely have to take a pay cut just because he and Ilya are such ludicrously valuable players that it’d be hard to ever have them operating under the same cap. But it could have happened in a way that doesn’t humiliate him further. It could have given him even the tiniest scrap of dignity back. And instead she put him on goddamn fire sale and had him fucking laugh it off. He’s worth less than the fucking rookie but it’s fine because his big strong husband will provide for him. It is a meaninglessly cruel humiliation ritual that did not have to happen and it makes me so unbelievably fucking mad.
It is not about the money. It is about the fact that Shane Hollander is a queer person of color who gets paid pennies on the dollar despite being better than every single straight white player in that league. And we are told it’s not a big deal because his husband will take care of him. Jesus Christ.
If I lived in universe and Shane had told me how Ilya treated him after that conversation with Crowell or after the metros reject him or in almost any other conversation they have in that book, I would have been like “I WAS RIGHT TO HATE HIM DURING HIS FUCKASS NAVY BLUE SHEET PHASE BABY DUMP THAT MAN.” I would be livid. I would drive to Canada to kick that guy’s fucking ass. I would have called Scott Hunter and been like “hey are you and Kip looking for a third. Also where are we on the retirement front like will the admirals be needing a new gay superstar center soonish bc boy do I have someone for you.”
Shane’s fears of coming out after he receives racist and homophobic threats from the commissioner of the goddamn league are valid. But the narrative never acknowledges that. It says Ilya is right to be mad at him and affirms him again and again. It punishes Shane for his fear and it never lets him process all the ways he has been hurt. I am so goddamn angry. The fact that Shane is the one who got hate for the long game is mind boggling to me.
hi i just wanted to say that i absolutely adore your heated rivalry works (both snapping birch and the child star crashout au)
and one of my favorite things about your stories besides the amount of effort and care and thought you put into each of the characters to make sure they come of as real and have their own unique narratives (the work your putting in really comes through in your writing and makes your works so fun and engaging and fulfilling to read)
and just how incredibly well you tackle complex themes and ideas and just never present a simple solution and instead make the reader sit with your work and just fully acknowledge how fucked up the situation is and then draw real life parallels to our own world is literally so fucking good, you don’t even understand
sorry i got sidetracked and also used a lot of ands so double sorry if that made it hard to read
anyway what i wanted to say is that i love that you fully recognize that shane transferring to ottawa is not a happy ending. i think a lot of people acknowledge shane’s right to be angry and have lingering trauma about the metros, but that’s also usually side by side with (or sometimes the exclusive sentiment is) the ‘oh! he gets to be with ilya now on a team that’ll accept him so everything’s sunshine and rainbows!! <3’
i haven’t seen anyone else straight up go ‘hey. that shouldn’t have happened. the metros should not have been able to force out shane fucking hollander and shane should’ve been able to stay with the metros if that was what he wanted. he should’ve been granted a choice.’
i just think it’s so important to recognize that shane should’ve been able to choose where he was going to play. that the lack of choice is really just an extension of being forced out of a space that he used to belong in, it’s a reminder that he’s been othered so he should be grateful that he has any options to begin with. and that’s just something he’ll have to live with that
also maybe it’s just me but one of my instant turn offs that’s unfortunately really popular in this fandom is when shane’s characterized to not have been a good captain, as never wanting to be, or not liking his role as captain - or when he’s written to have never gotten along with any of the other metros ever (which makes no sense cause why would he choose to come out to them??)
just anything that creates a narrative to soften the blow of shane being forced out of the metros by turning it into ‘well he didn’t actually like it there and is probably really happy to have left’
i just think it diminishes his feelings on the situation. like personally i would be so fucking angry to begin with but i’d also probably be grieving. and also shit was just happening to this man. he had such limited agency when it came to the situation with the metros and i just really hate how that’s usually completely glossed over or simplified
so i really fucking appreciate you going no. it’s not fucking fair or right that shane has to be the one to leave, and then actually exploring his relationship to the metros (and montreal) in a nuanced way that acknowledges that the situation is actually really fucking complex. that man has been a part of that organization and a staple in that city since he was a teenager, chances are he has some attachment to it - so even if he was happy to get to be with ilya year round and play on the cens, he was probably still feeling some type of way about the metros - because guess what? emotions are not neat and tidy and you can’t just move away from the source of you conflicting feelings to make those feelings go away.
so, yeah, you’re creating some really amazing writing with some really fucking amazing character analysis so thank you for putting it out into the world <3
(sorry for this being so absurdly long, i really didn’t mean for it to be - it got away from me and i got too attached to cut anything)
I have never fucked with an ask harder in my entire life. Anon, you are speaking my entire language.
So, full disclaimer, I know the Ottawa ending is very popular with a lot of readers, and not every story is going to be my cup of tea. That is okay. Not every story is written for me, and that is totally fine, I get that. If you like the ending of the long game, I fully respect that, but maybe skip this post, because I did not like it and I don’t have super charitable things to say about it.
So I legitimately cannot let myself think about or engage with the ending of the long game because it makes me too physically angry.
Which is a really weird reaction for me, if I’m being honest. Like, sincerely, I usually maintain more of an emotional distance from the media I consume. I do not get super heated about stories. I don’t get angry or sad, whether I like how the story was written or not. I like rotating them in my head and picking them apart but I don’t usually have like, a lingering emotional reaction to them. If I don’t like a book, I can usually just be like “oh. That kind of sucked” and leave it at that.
The ending of the long game makes me physically angry.
It is simply not a happily ever after to me. It is such a cruel humiliation ritual that I just can’t see it that way. I would be so much more okay with the ending if Shane had more of a choice in going to Ottawa. But he didn’t. He was forced out, and that fact is barely even acknowledged, let alone processed by the narrative.
If Shane had looked at his life and said “hey, I could stay in Montreal and win 7 Stanley cups and retire here like I always dreamed of, but my life with Ilya is more important to me so I’m going to leave my old dream behind so we don’t have to be long distance anymore,” I would be so much happier about the ending. Because he gets the narrative benefit of it being a sacrifice. There is decision in that. There is autonomy. There is dignity in the fact that he at least gets to choose.
There is no dignity in what happens to Shane.
He gets forced out by homophobia. He is accused of something he does not do. The media eviscerates him. His teammates, who had already reacted poorly to him being gay, who were already icing him out because of his relationship, completely abandon him. His legacy is destroyed. His reputation is trashed. All of the respect he has spent his entire career earning is gone.
Shane leaves Montreal in disgrace. He loses his home of more than a decade. He loses his team. He loses his captaincy. He loses his legacy. He loses almost every friend he has ever had.
But it’s fine. Because his husband already has friends and he can share. It’s really good that all of this happened, really, because Shane gets to go off to the Gay Hockey Oasis, where twinks can frolic freely.
Everyone fucking clap.
There is something so fundamentally repulsive to me about the idea that the answer to being retaliated against by your homophobic teammates is to leave and Go To The Land Of The Gays Where You Will Be Happy And Free. Your homophobic teammates will be keeping the team you spent your entire career building btw. They get to stay. They get everything you built. You go and find happiness with the people who already accept people like you. There is no fixing homophobia :(
Fuck. That. Noise. I will never be happy at an ending that happens because a queer person is forced out of a space. I can’t be happy about that.
I think one of the things that upsets me so much about the long game and its ending is that there is no ability to emotionally process what Shane’s teammates do to him because the entire ordeal is basically brushed off. A lot of it happens off camera. The effect it has on Shane is given next to no attention. Nothing about it is processed by the narrative. There is no cathartic relief. And so I am left fucking angry.
I think it’s helpful to think about catharsis through the lens of its original meaning. The concept of catharsis is rooted in Greek tragedy. In Ancient Greece, they believed that stories and specifically tragedies were important because they helped the audience process and release negative emotion. You left that story feeling relieved even though bad things happened because the stories helped you understand and process your own negative emotions. You get cathartic relief. They believed so strongly in the importance of this that they would build amphitheaters by hospitals because they thought it legitimately had health benefits.
You don’t get any catharsis out of Shane’s storyline. Because the fact that something tragic is happening to him is barely even acknowledged.
Shane comes out to his teammates off camera. We do not see what happens in the room. He has a single sentence about it in the epilogue and told in retrospect. Oh, by the way, he came out to his fucking teammates. No biggie.
Later, we know coming out made it awkward between them. We know sometimes they still use homophobic words around him and it makes Shane uncomfortable. Nothing is discussed in detail, and most of it is brought up retrospectively. Most of it happens off camera.
We also know that Shane’s sexuality is an open secret after. It is the unspoken something that the whole league knows. People didn’t know before but they sure do how.
That knowledge did not come from nowhere. Someone fucking outed him. But we will never talk about it. It is all off camera. It is barely even addressed.
Now, Shane also comes out off camera in snapping birch. But there, it is treated like a horror story.
When writing that text exchange, I broke my usual convention. If there’s a break in the texts, I don’t usually re-show parts of the text exchange that have already appeared—I just pick up where the last texts left off. But when Shane comes out, I copy and paste the texts you’ve already seen before you get to Dave checking in on him again.
Because I don’t want you to just see the silence. I want you to see his father’s encouragement. I want you to see Shane’s nerves. And I want you to see him overcome those nerves. He was afraid and he trusted them anyway. I want you to see that, and then I want you to see those empty fucking time gaps after.
The horror is in the lack of knowledge. It is in the fact that Dave is not there and does not know if Shane is even safe right now. You are meant to feel like a terrified parent reading that conversation back again and again and wondering if he is okay.
That’s not the treatment that Shane’s coming out in the books gets. It’s not off camera because that’s the point—it’s off camera because the details are unimportant. It is the only time in his entire life where Shane gets to choose to come out, and it is an afterthought.
Shane is so often an afterthought in the scenes that should be significant to him that it drives me nuts. Shane’s best friend accidentally outs him to the world, and Ilya, who already wanted to come out, is the one who gets to say it’s okay. And to be clear, I am not trying to diminish the fact that Ilya got outed. The fact that he wants to come out does not make his outing any less violating. He has the right to pick how.
But it is Shane’s best friend and Shane’s biggest fear. And the narrative never processes that. It’s just fine.
The exact same issue is found in the teams’ reactions to the reveal of Shane and Ilya’s relationship. We get to see the Centaurs react to Ilya. He is greeted with laughter, and that is fantastic.
Shane is greeted by silence. He describes the tension as being like he’s playing a game of operation waiting to get buzzed. They are not happy for him. They do not accept him. Even before the trip, they ice him out. But we do not address that in any real capacity. It just happens, and then he is forced out, and that’s it. We do not process it. The point is not the rejection. The rejection is a means to an end, and the end is fucking Ottawa.
To be so, so clear—I am not upset that Ilya got accepted when Shane wasn’t. I am glad Ilya got accepted. And I’m not upset that Ilya gets the narrative attention that he does, because I love Ilya’s character and I want to see him get that attention. But if you want to tackle the kind of topics that Shane’s storyline in the long game raises, you need to give it the necessary narrative space.
And like. I’ve heard all the rationales the internet tosses around about this already. Each book focuses on a specific character and the long game is Ilya’s story, not Shane’s. Shane is not meant to get the same narrative attention because it isn’t his book. The author has said that she never intended for it to be that deep.
She should have written a different story then.
One of my biggest rules of writing is that you do not get to escape the logical consequences of your own narrative. The audience is not fucking stupid. You cannot dodge the weight of the writing decisions you made, so you have to fucking deal with it or you cheapen the narrative.
Take Svetlana’s absence in snapping birch, which I’ve talked about in other posts. I love Svetlana. I want her in the story. But if I include her, it necessarily has narrative consequences.
Russia is a source of conflict because it is illegal for its citizens to promote LGBTQ+ rights. Svetlana is a Russian citizen who regularly returns to Russia. If I have her out here tweeting in the defense of her friend’s bisexuality, then either Russia isn’t that big of a threat, or Svetlana is fucking stupid. That is the logical consequence of the narrative decisions, and I cannot ignore the logical consequences.
As a result, I cannot include Svetlana without cheapening the conflict or her character. So I have to exclude her even if I want her there. Because the reader is not a fucking idiot, and if I can figure out Russia Bad, so can they.
If you do not want to deal with the consequences of writing a storyline about a queer character getting outed and rejected by his loved ones, then do not write that story. Develop it in accordance with its logical consequences or pick a different story.
The logical consequences of Shane’s ending in the long game are fucking tragic. And it is never truly discussed or processed. The narrative gives you no catharsis. Because it is not treated like a tragedy.
Shane is completely rejected by every single person in that locker room. The only person to say something even remotely in his favor is Hayden, who fronts his defense with how fucking weird Shane’s relationship is, but hey, he’s still our captain. Great job, Hayd.
Shane says explicitly that he hoped for better from the people he loved so much. He loved them. They turned on him. And they do not apologize. He loses them permanently. Over ten years together and only two of them come to his goddamn wedding.
And the narrative’s solution is to have him just leave and go somewhere that appreciates him, i.e., his husband’s team, and we should be happy about that. Never mind that he gave Montreal everything. Never mind that it was his dream to see his number retired to the rafters. Never mind that the team he goes to doesn’t have the cap space for him and he wants to be paid what he’s worth. His rich fucking husband will provide. Ottawa gets him at a goddamn gay discount.
Play out the logical consequences of that one. It does not matter if you’re the greatest hockey player in the fucking world. If you tack on enough minorities, then you get him on goddamn fire sale. Too Asian, too autistic, too queer, so he goes for a fucking song. The greatest hockey player in the world, and he is paid less than Troy fucking Barrett.
And I know that’s not why Shane has to take a massive pay cut at the ending. It’s because they do not have the cap space for him, not because they value him less. But that is not what people are going to think when they look at his salary. They are going to see a queer poc with three goddamn Stanley cups getting paid less than every single one of his teammates, and they are going to think they know why.
And maybe you say it doesn’t matter what people think. But I’d say it matters a whole fucking lot to the queer pocs who are wondering if they will ever have a place in this fuck-off white, aggressively straight sport. I think it’s going to matter a whole fucking lot to them when they are negotiating their own salaries and suddenly are finding themselves valued a lot less.
After all, look at what they pay Shane fucking Hollander.
I am not saying that queer people should feel obligated to remain in a hostile space. But I am saying that if they are forced out, you need to treat it like the tragedy it is. Do not write an ending that happens because a character is outed and spat on by his friends of more than a fucking decade and tell me to goddamn clap. Do not call that a fucking Happily Ever After. And I know that’s what it’s meant to be, because that is what the author calls it on her goddamn blog.
As you can probably tell, I feel strongly about the subject.
I don’t fuck with a lot of fandom’s characterizations around the entire thing, to be honest. Like, you nailed all of my issues with it perfectly. I hate the idea that Shane wasn’t friends with his teammates. I hate the idea that he was always a bad captain. Because that is all meant to make the fact that he was forced out somehow more okay. It is meant to make the loss he felt somehow less.
He spent over ten years with those people. He loved them. They all turned on him. And they did not apologize, and they did not come to his wedding. He still invited them and they did not come.
That is supposed to hurt.
If what happened to Shane happened to me, I would be angry for the rest of my life. I would not be able to get over it easily, if I ever got over it.
Ottawa isn’t a happy ending to me. It would have been if Shane got to choose to go be with Ilya instead of getting forced out. But he was forced, and that is what makes it goddamn tragic.
I am not saying that I wanted Shane to stay in a hostile environment. I am saying that the happy ending to discrimination is not to put the high achieving minority out to fucking pasture in the land of the gays where everyone accepts him already. Shane should have gotten to choose where he wanted to be. If that is Ottawa, let him actually choose Ottawa. It is not a choice if you have to tear away the option of Montreal so he’ll make it.
The answer to homophobia is not to segregate the fucking gays in happy centaur land. It is to get rid of the fucking homophobes. Do not tell me that the system is homophobic and you can’t change that. Skill issue. If the system won’t change?
Shane and Ilya go out for coffee a little while after they're outed and it's not until they're home and have parked the car in the driveway and are walking up to the door that Shane suddenly realizes:
"I think that was our first date."
Ilya frowns at him. "What?"
"I mean, kind of?" Shane says. "At least our first date in public."
Ilya stops to consider and realizes that holy shit, Shane might be right. Still, "It was just coffee. If I am taking you on a date, it will be somewhere much nicer. Someplace with candles."
Shane shrugs. "I've heard coffee is a pretty classic first date activity, actually."
They've reached the door and as Shane goes to unlock it, Ilya leans against the door frame with a teasing grin.
"It was a good date then?" he asks. "Maybe nice enough that you want to invite me in?"
Shane feels a giddy rush and has to fight to suppress his smile. "I don't know. I'm pretty sure that's more of a third date activity."
"You are Mr. Dating Expert now?"
"Just don't want you to think I'm easy."
"You are easy," Ilya says, wrapping his hand around Shane's waist and tugging him in close for a kiss.
Shane hums into the kiss happily, clutching Ilya's shoulder when he trails his lips down the column of Shane's neck. "Just for you."
Ok but Ilya not realizing until much later that he hurt Shane with things he’d done in the past
One day it randomly comes up as Ilya says something about a time he acted like a dick and Shane is just like “Eh it’s ok, looking back I understand now that you were in a ‘I’m going to hurt you before you can hurt me’ mindset and that’s why you acted like that.”
And Ilya is staring at him and Shane asks what’s wrong and Ilya goes “I hurt you?” And Shane’s just like well yeah but it was forever ago don’t worry about it. But Ilya is worrying about it because back when he’d done the various hurtful things he’d been in downward spirals where he was convinced he didn’t have the ability to hurt Shane because he didn’t matter enough to Shane to hurt him, so he didn’t think the way he acted had any negative effects. And now he’s turning pale and his eyes are getting big as he’s realizing that oh god when he did those things he hurt his favorite person and he hadn’t even realized it
He makes Shane tell him the different times it happened and Shane doesn’t really want to because clearly this is just going to upset Ilya more, but hiding it or lying is probably also going to make things worse in the long run so it’s better to get it out now. So he mentions Ilya ghosting him after they had sex, and then how Ilya acted in Sochi, and that whole night in Vegas, and “I like you… Not as a person, obviously”
And the whole time Ilya is silently nodding and looking like he wants to throw up because no no no those weren’t supposed to be things that hurt Shane, those were supposed to be things that bounced off Shane without affecting him because they were only ever meant to hurt or protect himself, Shane was never supposed to have been hurt by those and fuck how did he not see in the moment the way that he was actively hurting Shane by doing that
And now it’s even worse because Shane won’t even be mad at him about it, he keeps insisting on being understanding and not upset and trying to make Ilya feel better when in fact Ilya is the worst most awful person in the world who should be punished for eternity for making 22 year old floppy haired baby Shane SAD like some kind of MONSTER
The next Galina session Shane is also there with Ilya who has his head in his hands and Shane is just like ok so we may have accidentally stepped on a landmine the other night-
the number 1 rule of fanfic is have fun and be yourself. the number 2 rule is the average healthy adult male can lose roughly 2 liters of blood before dying.
your fics are so creative and i just read the first two chapters of the post tampa fic, i’m v excited! i’m a big fan of your heated rivalry procedural series, and i wanted to ask what’s your stance on derivative works? (art, fic etc. inspired by your stuff, or the concept of a procedural hr , w due credits and tagging of course) either way, many kudos, and thank you for your awesome writing :)
Hi!
First of all, thank you for reading!!! I’m glad you’re having fun with this series.
Secondly, I am super excited about the idea of derivative works. If I see fanarts or other stuff of the sort I might just die of excitement. As for written works, I have been secretly hoping someone will make a socmed fic continuing the “cross your thoughtless heart” internet reactions to Shane Anti-Terrorist Hero Hollander hahaha
Other written works that just happened to be “inspired by” sound sweet of course! I would be very curious to read them too!!
Overall just knowing you’ve inspired someone to create is amazing!
absolutely looosssinggg it. i'm so obsessed with movies which portray the woman MC in a highly specific job because the writers clearly think it's like "off-beat" and "quirky" but have no idea how the field works whatsoever.
i decided to try a romcom i somehow missed i the 2000s 'head over heels' and i got 3 and a half minutes in and we're introduced to the lonely MC with bad taste in men as evidenced by her extremely short list of ex boyfriends, including her first boyfriend when she was 11 or something because i guess that's still relevant in her adult life.
so she's resigned herself to never finding love and prefers to ignore men to focus all her energy into her career.
this job is immediately presented as though it's for spinsters with no hope of ever finding a man.
the mc's lesbian bestie (whose first line involves her being scolded for being too sexual in the workplace, but moving on) points out their colleagues as evidence that they're doomed to a romance-less, sexless life if they don't switch up their shared career path. the colleagues are three old women, so-dubbed "the menopause triplets":
these women are presented as if they have no idea what's going on at any given moment. this is 2001, and presumably this is an entry level job requiring low effort and no experience.
then their boss bursts into the room, unceremoniously bumping a large painting into the door jam and walls, announcing that it's a new project for our MC.
our MC is thrilled to see the painting. apparently it's a light in the daily slog at her dreary job for loser women with nothing going on in their lives.
And that job is? Conservator of paintings (specializing in Renaissance) at the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The painting being handled like an old couch on its way to the curb?
The Bacchanal of the Andrians by Titian.
Her lesbian colleague who is presumably also a a highly trained & skilled curator finds it depressing that the MC is so excited about the painting.
it's a quirk unique to this MC that she cares so much about paintings, in her department at the metropolitan museum of art, where her colleagues find all that art business rather dreary. because we all know that's what conservators in extremely competitive museum positions are like.
I'm not saying there can't be lifelong love in here somewhere but I also just feel like the monogamous heterosexual marriage you're fantasizing about isn't necessarily best represented by the bacchanal. and that's okay. but i do stand by that.
HELPPPP i'm on the phone with @sagaspell and i was like "women in these movies also always have like jobs for phds when they're 21 somehow" and saga said "no it's okay because chick flicks exist in an alternate reality with different age and societal rules, like the omegaverse"
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