
blake kathryn

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Today's Document

JBB: An Artblog!
YOU ARE THE REASON

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taylor price
sheepfilms
Claire Keane
Not today Justin

if i look back, i am lost
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@princessamericachavez
Scott Hunter: lawful GOAT
Shane Hollander: neutral GOAT
Ilya Rozanov: chaotic GOAT
JJ Bozieau: lawful bff
Hayden Pike: neutral bff
Cliff Marlow: chaotic bff
Commissioner: lawful evil
Grigori Rozanov: neutral evil
Dallas Kent: chaotic evil
Hobie being Miles’ #1 supporter, hype man & homie 👊🏿
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.
Just making use of my free will
Inspo🖼:The Meeting on the Turret Stairs
#meet the buckley-diazes
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)
https://archiveofourown.org/series/5959431
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.
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.
incredible prev tags
hi! i hope you’re having a lovely day!
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"