I rec what I read and read what I love! I don’t have any real triggers, so mind all the tags.
These days I pretty exclusively read and rec FirstPrince (RWRB) and now Hollanov (Heated Rivalry).
I have past rec lists for HP ships: Dramione, Drarry, and rare pairs like NottPott, Scorbus, Panville, ParkWeasel, Harry/Teddy, etc. I appreciate the subversive nature of fanfic, and do think it's possible to participate while supporting the trans community and disavowing jkr. That said, especially with current politics in the US, it's been hard for me personally to find joy in HP any longer. Everyone has different levels of comfort with connection to this fandom these days. From my perspective, as long as we're both pro-trans rights and anti-jkr (and vote accordingly), we're on the same team.
Knowing you loved a story I suggested thrills me. Let's yell about it together! I am on discord in the Rolled Sleeve Agenda but it's easiest to message me here. I'm sure the authors would appreciate hearing your thoughts as well, so give them some love if you're up to it. 💚
Lists below:
What you'll find in my recs:
A LOT of shorter works and complete works. I love one shots.
Coworkers, pining, roommates, fake dating, friends to lovers, humor, cross-gen/age gap, only one mf'ing bed. I love an AU!
Just firstprince (rwrb, Henry/Alex) and Hollanov (Heated Rivalry Shane/Ilya) these days, but I've still got lots of HP gems in my older lists.
What you won't find much of:
In general: memory loss, time loop, time travel. Notable exceptions!
In HP: Snape, DE, Marauders, unredeemed Draco, etc - never my cup of tea
Sapphic pairings. LGBTQ+ representation is dear to my heart. However, my escapism into fanfic is mostly m/m, so I don't have many wlw recs to offer.
Please message me if you find broken links or know an author/artist tag I missed. 💚
FirstPrince (Red, White & Royal Blue)
Master List of FirstPrince Recs - LOTS of reclists organized within this link! You will find Angst, AU - Part One, AU - Part Two, AU - Part Three, Canon Compliant, Coffee Shop, College/High School, Everything Else, Fake Dating, Holidays, Parental Angst, Recent Reads, Roommates/Neighbors - Part One, Roommates/Neighbors - Part Two, Single Parents/Parents, Smut Favorites, Sports, Tech-Based Fun
Drarry
My summer 2023 Drarry reads + a bonus RWRB
Watersports 😏 (mostly Drarry)
Bite-Size (Under 10k) - Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four
Dramione
Smut - favorites by kink
Caught in the Act - the caught-masturbating collection
Eighth Year - Part One, Part Two, Part Three
Bite-Size (Under 5k) - Part One, Part Two
Rare Pair Specific
NottPott Recs
Panville Recs
ParkWeasel Recs
2020 Rare Pair Recs
2021 Rare Pair Recs
2022 Rare Pair Recs
Mixed Lists (Drarry, Dramione, Rare Pairs):
Age Gap + Power Imbalance (Teacher/Student, Boss/Employee)
Fics that give me warm fuzzies, Fics that I couldn't stop reading, Fics that I'd want on a shelf
Fics that I've re-read multiple times, Fics I wish I could read again for the first time
Can't stop, won't stop. With one or two exceptions, this is a very Ilya-centric batch of stories.
I'll build a house inside of you by @jtimu (66k, shane x ilya)
“I want to remember this,” Ilya had said then. It was two presses with his thumb to snap his phone’s camera on, his other hand still tangled in Hollander’s hair. Hollander who had looked dumbly back at him, his mouth pink and wet, desire a physical weight across his skin.
You have to delete that, Hollander texted the next day, and Ilya could not contain the fizzing annoyance that this was the only thing that Hollander wanted to talk to him about. He kept it on his phone out of a combination of horniness and spite, looked at the video every time he jerked off, months of masturbatory fodder.
The devastating fallout from a phone hack. A truly excellent rendering of one of my favorite fanfic tropes (marriages of convenience) and a well-earned ending.
For the Right Reasons by @citrusses (62k, shane x ilya)
Rozanov says, "Then what is the problem? Tomorrow you give Tiffani a kiss, it will be very nice for her. Will be nice for you, too. Yes?"
Shane glares at him, and Rozanov's marble jaw melts into a smile. When he smiles like this, he looks like a prowling cat. Hunger lurks so obviously behind his teeth. Shane can see it.
"Hm," Rozanov hums, when Shane stays quiet. "Maybe not nice for you. But Hollander, it will be nice for me."
Even though I devour everything citrusses writes, I resisted this one for weeks because I couldn't quite wrap my head around the idea of Shane on the Bachelor. I've never been more wrong. Of course, Shane would get talked into a reality show, and of course, it would be a bit of a train wreck. Ilya is somehow both harder to pin down and more charismatic as a TV show producer. This story is laced with the same deliciously addictive drugs as the source material.
black dog by delagauchetiere (68k, shane x ilya)
Chernysh showed me park today, he texts Hollander that evening. Chernysh had barked at the back door around three o'clock and took himself off through the fence after Ilya let him out. Ilya guesses he'd had enough couch and television time.
Oh yeah? Hollander texts back. It's a nice park. He likes to run.
No running. Just walking.
He was going easy on you then
Hmph. Ilya thinks for a minute. He doesn't want to show his hand here, but also he doesn't want to make Chernysh sick, so. What does Chernysh eat?
The reply comes quickly. Don't feed my dog.
Serious. What does he eat?
Serious, please don't feed my dog.
This slow-burn snuck up on me slowly and then consumed me. AU that diverges from canon after the Prospect Cup, with a sprinkling of something extra.
Something Borrowed/Something Blew by Fangirl_Shrieks (38k, shane x ilya)
Ilya looks at his husband's profile—the jaw, the set of it, the specific furrow that has not fully released since the argument, the redness around his eyes that Shane will not acknowledge and Ilya will not mention. He has been looking at this face for nearly fifteen years. He knows every version of it. He has catalogued versions of it the way he catalogues Shane's hockey hands, the Vancouver joke, the way he folds the dish towel over the oven handle. He has a private library of this face and he has been adding to it since before he had the right to.
The face in the front pew of the dream church. Shane with nothing left to manage.
He thinks: I put that there.
An unflinching exploration of llya's depression post-TLG. Beautiful, but not always the easiest read. There were points where it actually felt difficult to breathe.
HOLLANDER VS ROZANOV I by gone_girl (19K, shane x ilya)
...they couldn’t do all the things they usually liked to do because Ilya’s body was a mess. Every muscle hurt, his joints creaked, his eyes throbbed. He felt like a clot of pain, sticky and hot and pulsing. He’d never felt this way after a fight in his life. He felt his heart everywhere.
A visceral, sexy AU where both boys are boxers. Ouch, but also yum.
HOLLANDER & ROZANOV ARE DEAD by eurydicees (13k, scott x kip, shane x ilya)
They’re so fucking stupid, is the thing. It was dumb when they were rookies trading hotel room numbers on the ice, it was dumb a few years into their legacies when they got too touchy about every mention of the other, and it’s dumb now that they’ve apparently tried to make something real out of it. It’s fucking stupid now that Rozanov’s ruined his life for it.
But love makes you do stupid things, and it makes things that look stupid from the outside feel right on the inside. It makes you brave, or dumb, or both at once. Scott knows this very well. His Stanley Cup kiss with Kip is still being used as a reaction image a year or so later.
I am such a sucker for a well done Scott POV. This one is particularly sharp and sad.
Geryon by a_good_soldier (12k, shane x ilya)
He likes to know the distance to a thing just by looking. He likes to know his body can stop if he wants it to. He likes to know the boundaries of what he can control.
Hollander, of course, is beyond control. Beyond anything. Ilya fucks women and snarls nasty things into their shoulders and comes hard, and always knows what happens next. He can chart the pinging radar-line from kissing to shirtlessness to fucking to exit, custom-designed for each bed partner. Never artificial, but always managed.
With Shane, Ilya never knows what the next thing will be out of his mouth. At any time, he might say Shane’s first name. Ah, so he might. So he did.
A gorgeously written, unflinching exploration of Ilya and his relationship with sex. One of my favorite Ilya POVs.
Temporarily/liminality by naokime (10k, rose x shane, shane x Ilya)
When Shane meets Rose, he doesn't think about Rozanov at all. What a relief that is.
It happens so rarely. For the past eight years, Rozanov has been living somewhere in the back of Shane's mind, a constant, unrelenting presence. And when it’s finally gone, it's only natural to think it must mean something.
A variation on the Rose era. I really enjoyed this achy meditation on the limitations of wishful thinking.
today (and every day) is a beautiful day to read this fic. forced marriage but make it hockey, sex tapes, angst, did i mention sex... you could not ask for more...
In late 2014, celebrity photos start dropping. Ilya deletes his texts, his photos, a video he should never have taken. It isn't soon enough.
I love this fic, I love this Ilya, I love this Shane. Run don't walk:
There is a tense note in Hollander’s voice. This is not unusual, because Hollander is held together by latent panic
AND
Maybe Hollander feels like this all of the time, like his skin will crawl away without him if he does not hold himself still.
AND
Twenty three years ago his deck was shuffled. He plays for Russia. He is drafted. He takes a video. He drives to Montreal.
He kisses Shane Hollander.
today (and every day) is a beautiful day to read this fic. forced marriage but make it hockey, sex tapes, angst, did i mention sex... you could not ask for more...
In late 2014, celebrity photos start dropping. Ilya deletes his texts, his photos, a video he should never have taken. It isn't soon enough.
I love this fic, I love this Ilya, I love this Shane. Run don't walk:
There is a tense note in Hollander’s voice. This is not unusual, because Hollander is held together by latent panic
AND
Maybe Hollander feels like this all of the time, like his skin will crawl away without him if he does not hold himself still.
AND
Twenty three years ago his deck was shuffled. He plays for Russia. He is drafted. He takes a video. He drives to Montreal.
He kisses Shane Hollander.
Astronauts are so funny man. Here's just a couple of things I've found hilarious from this past week of space stuff:
It's probably already been spread around here enough already, but in case anyone's missed it; 7 hours after launch, commander Reid Wiseman, dealing with tech issues, uttered the generational quote "I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working."
After fixing the issues that were afflicting the onboard toilet, mission specialist Christina Koch (who has quickly become my favourite of the four) laughingly said “I’m the space plumber, I’m proud to call myself the space plumber.”
On Easter Sunday, the Artemis II crew hosted a makeshift egg hunt, by hiding packets of dehydrated scrambled eggs around their Orion capsule.
The way the crew always makes sure to make it very clear they're in space when doing interviews. From stuff like Wiseman just hanging out floating sideways on screen or Koch letting her hair loose so it can freely span out flowing around her.
While in transit, the crew decided to record a parody of those bad 80s sitcom intros where everyone turns and smiles at the camera.
When the crew reached the furthest point from Earth in the mission, they jokingly clambored over each other in an effort to get to the far side of the capsule, so that they could individually claim to be the furthest person from earth.
At the same time, on the ISS which was at the time on the other side of earth, the 7 astronauts onboard had a light-hearted race to the far side of the station, making jokes about being the furthest humans from Artemis.
On the way back to earth, NASA actually managed to establish an audio call between the crews of the ISS and Artemis II (where they shared the above info), and Koch called one member of the ISS crew, Jessica Meir, her "astro-sister" as the two of them previously spacewalker together in 2019. Meir then responded I'm so happy that we are back in space together, even if we are a few miles apart" (a few here being 230,000).
While Jeremy Hansen was doing an interview, Wiseman and Koch were just in the background swatting the mission mascot (a little moon plush toy named Rise) back and forth between each other.
Jaw Man flicked his middle finger up at Ilya, who didn’t seem to mind, and gestured towards Shane and Hayden with raised eyebrows. “The f*** are you even doing right now, man.”
Ilya said briefly, “Orgy.”
“Uh,” said Shane, “no, that’s not—”
Ilya grinned at him. It was a mean-edged grin but something about it seemed to suggest that he was joking with Shane, rather than about him. “Oh, he speaks.”
“We’re not here for an orgy,” Shane said to Jaw Man. “We’re missionaries with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
with massive thanks to @theburialofstrawberries, @tackytigerfic, @enparallel, @myrtlefics, @goblinmatriarch, @elskanellis, and maz !
big shout out to tumblr for being the first major site in like two years to implement an ill-advised "feature" nobody wants, likes or respects that doesn't involve AI
i respect those people who have sideblogs for all their different interests, if you follow me, you’ll just have to accept you’ll be submitted to whatever nonsense i’m into at the moment
I love how Boyfriend™️ Shane becomes with Ilya at the cottage. He’s picking him up from the airport. He’s carrying in his suitcase. He’s making hamburgers on the grill. He’s lighting campfires and holding Ilya in his lap and scaring off loons. Shane Hollander might be surprised when Ilya pulls out the boyfriend word at dinner with his parents but this man has been training his whole life to be a Boyfriend™️
I have this headcanon where Shane is the more butch one between the two. I imagine his dad taught him how to be handy around the house, how to do some minor construction/repairs, how to start a campfire, and he enjoys the outdoors, and maybe did scouts when he was a boy. And in contrast, Ilya grew up as a slick, city boy in Moscow and hated the wilderness and hires people to fix things and is like afraid of spiders.
Btw, in this headcanon Ilya just *loves* when Shane goes Boyfriend™️ mode (and later Husband™️ mode). Ilya loves watching that man mow the grass and repair the deck. He loves being taken care of by Shane, and especially loves it when he does it in front of people. Neither are emasculated by the other in the ways they embody their own masculinity within the relationship. It just balances them out and turns each other on.
Do you have any firstprince fics you're writing? Shoot Your Shot was incredible and I can't wait to read more from you :)
That's very sweet, thank you! I'm glad you liked it.
I have nothing more than dozens of jotted ideas and snippets of dialogue, alas. I've been working on my master's degree as well as regular work and life. Never say never but nothing planned at the moment.
In full disclosure: a sad truth I've come to accept about myself is that my hyperfixations are all-consuming chokeholds beyond my control. They have a hard time coexisting. I've had deep dives in Dramione, then Drarry, then Firstprince...and currently Hollanov.
My heart doesn't want to move on from my past loves, but my brain has other ideas. I still deeply love firstprince and I am very excited for RWRW! I'm just transfixed by HR rewatches, Hayden Finds Out fics, and whatever Hudson Williams has done now. I would truthfully be more likely to have a Hollanov fic in the near-ish future than FP. I'm sorry! Hopefully RWRW brings things back around. 💚
