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Ilya Meta Masterlist Beginnerlist* part 1

*because I don't think it will ever be fully finished!

I have compiled a bunch of links to meta posts about Ilya Rozanov that I encountered and enjoyed. I hope you also enjoy them!

Shane’s version: part 1 here ! 💗 part 2 here

Shane thinks that when Ilya is feeling down or hard on himself that he should recreate the trophy room scene with Ilya looking at his own trophies. It quickly becomes clear that’s not working, but all is well when they shift four feet to the right and Ilya perks right up fucking Shane in front of Shane’s trophy wall. Shane is the ultimate trophy for Ilya. If Shane wants him, loves him, keeps wanting and loving him, then he must be worth wanting and loving because Shane only ever does things that are worth it and he only accepts the best.

#Ilya is not jacking it to his MVP award #he’s jacking it watching Shane receive his MVP award #and lift the cup #and lift it again #get out of my sandwich game changers #heated rivalry #the long game #the long game spoilers #heated rivalry headcanon #heated rivalry Drabble #heated rivalry fic #Hollanov #Hollanov fic #Hollanov headcanon #Ilya rozanov #Ilya rozanov meta #if you squint #Shane Hollander

Imagine you're ilya rozanov and you bury your feelings because it's been more than a decade since anyone cared enough to ask you how you are

You throw yourself into hockey in a wholly new way at 12 years old because your mother used to watch you play, because it can get violent sometimes and you need that, you're carrying so much rage

You discover sex at 14 and it's a different kind of escape. It feels like rebellion. It's nice to feel something other than rage and sadness. You crave feeling wanted. You crave the temporary reprieve of loose limbs and heaving breaths.

You crave never having to be alone whilst simultaneously never being known. You may never be ready to talk about any of this.

And then you realize you like boys too, and that's more sex, but this time there's a dangerous edge. It's rebellion and risk and freedom and maybe some downright stupidity.

You've never wanted to die. Not really. But there have been many times you didn't want to live.

But then the momentum shifts and hockey isn't just an escape from grief but an escape route out of Russia and away from the bleeding remnants of your fucked up family

It's a good thing you're good at it. But you need to be the best. So that not a team in the world would turn you down. So you can get the fuck out.

You fuck, and you fight, and you play your way into a whole new life.

Your father calls you a traitor. He says you should be ashamed. And you're ashamed of a great many things but not the ones he wants you to be.

Your brother says they're all better off without you. That you abandoned the family. You think he doesn't understand the meaning of the word.

And then you develop a pointless little crush on a freckle faced prodigy that may be the only one in the whole world that can stand toe to toe against you.

He has a loving home and a strong sense of morality. He's in this for the love of the game. He eats, sleeps, lives, breathes hockey in a way you sometimes envy. You wished you could still love it that way, like you did when your mother was in the crowd.

And maybe if you just touch him. Just get this whole thing out of your system, get the upper hand. You want to challenge him in wholly new ways and want to rile him up because you can only imagine how he'd respond.

He sees you as a cocky, self-assured bastard who needs to chirp his way through life. That's fair. That's all you've shown him.

But you're unravelling at the seams. You fucked and fucked and fucked, and he's still there under your skin.

No one else will do.

He has somehow become your entire fucking world and you chased him straight into the arms of another. It was the one and only time you dared to get closer.

But of course he didn't want you. Who would?

#ilya rozanov #hollanov #heated rivalry #heated rivalry meta #heated rivalry character study #ilya rozanov meta #ilya rozanov character study #the long game spoilers #this obvs covers ilyas thoughts pre canon up until Rose #but his characterization is informed by the long game so #long post

i have been reading a lot about teaching toddlers limits lately lol and now i am thinking about how some of this could actually be applicable to adults with attachment issues in romantic relationships. walk with me here... walk with me a moment...

a core idea in this writing about toddler discipline is that kids test limits to 1) to explore their burgeoning autonomy, 2) to learn what the "rules" are (both the specific rules of a particular environment and the more abstract rules of how to be a person in a particular culture), and 3) to repeatedly assure themselves that the rules will be consistently enforced, which really a way of assuring themselves that the world they inhabit is safe, predictable, and consistent, and that the people in charge of their world (their caregivers) will enforce the rules in predictable, consistent ways. kids crave the feeling of safety and security that comes from knowing that no matter how wild they act or how out of control they feel, there will always be someone there to gently reel them back in and help them regulate themselves again. i feel like a lot of attachment issues, especially avoidant attachment, stem from inconsistency in the environment and in the way caregivers respond to the child. sometimes the caregivers are warmly attentive and present; sometimes, for no discernible reason, they are cold, absent, or indifferent. sometimes they fly into a rage about a rule the child didn't even know they were breaking, ie something that had never been enforced as a limit or expectation before. sometimes the child does something so reckless or wild or out there it scares themselves, and the caregiver doesn't even seem to care or notice enough to discipline them or address it. i think you can easily imagine ilya rozanov in a chaotic childhood environment, with one parent whose parenting style was relentlessly critical, harsh, cold, focused on shaming, and another parent who vacillated between warm, funny, loving attentiveness and the emotional withdrawal/absence/shutting down of a major depressive episode. and i think it is interesting to think about the way ilya behaves in relationships (and in life? to think further) as like... the child testing limits to find out what the rules are, and to determine whether they are safe.

except that of course when you are an adult you are not a child anymore! you are an adult who bears sole responsibility for your actions and choices. your limit-testing and lashing out has greater capacity to hurt others. you may not have a caregiver figure anymore whose job it is to help gently reel you back in, help you regulate yourself so you can feel safe again. you are on your own, boy, and you are making a BIG mess of it, and you know it, in a half-submerged unacknowledged unconscious sort of way. you feel how bad you are at this and how much you are fucking it up and how capable you are of hurting the people you care about. but you also feel so out of control, so unable to regulate yourself, so easily overwhelmed or panicked or sent spiraling under emotional pressure. and maybe, in some ways, keeping your relationships surface-level is your way trying to protect other people from yourself. if i let you close i'll hurt you, because i'm a bad person, i'm not in control of myself, i panic and do things without understanding why.

#ilya shame thesis #is this anything #still untangling this idea... still revolving The Character...#ilya rozanov #ilya rozanov meta #i need some kind of tagging system for myself

As far as “Who’s The Better Player?” between Shane and Ilya goes, I think Shane is all-around better.

And I think it really comes down to how they approach hockey that gives these results.

However, as far as talent and natural athleticism goes, I believe Ilya holds the greater share of that.

Now, hear me out for a sec.

Shane is the one who is more obsessed with the game. Playing professional hockey is his dream job, his ultimate goal, the thing he’s wanted consistently for the longest time. He’s the one who forms his life around bettering his hockey game. He eats the gross food, he grinds out the exercise, he limits his diet to only the things that will make his body feel and perform and work best, and there are few exceptions to that.

Shane is the one kid in the peewee classes who stood there in his tiny skates watching the teacher like a hawk, and he’s the one who tried whatever movement they were being shown that day over and over again, over and over, until it was right. He wasn’t the gifted kid at first, he was just the hardest worker. And he continued to be the hardest worker all throughout the years and classes of kids who came and went through going to hockey classes and enrolled in hockey camps because their parents forced them to or they just wanted to try it out because they thought it looked fun… until they found out that it was hard first. They never quite got to the part where Shane lived. The part where practice made it look natural. The part where hard work made it look smooth. The part where one extremely obsessed little boy found the spirit of “slow is smooth, and smooth is fast” to heart and skills he learned while repeating “I just gotta’ get it right” in his head turned into being the only kid in the class who got good at anything.

He’ll have half a dozen Cup rings and a full trophy room and still think to himself the moment his skates touch the ice for practice, “There’s this thing I really need to work on today, it still isn’t right.”

He’s smart. He works hard. He works for every scrap that he gets, and then he notices that nobody else does it like he does, nobody else bothers to show up early and hit shot accuracy drills. He’s the one who sticks around after practice to iron out as many kinks as he can in the new thing they learned that day, because he wasn’t satisfied with “good enough” from the coach. Hard work was the golden ticket to hockey.

That’s not to say he wasn’t talented. Ilya simply has the greater sum of natural talent between the two of them. Shane had the obsessiveness to drive himself further than any of his peers would. It’s why those two were alone at the top. It really was neck-and-neck as to who would be drafted first. It came down to the style of player that the teams wanted, not necessarily pure heights of skill.

I think Ilya is more naturally athletic, talented from the first time he got plopped in a hockey class. He took to it like a fish to water, and there was an easy hour and a half of his day free of his dad. It helped that he was good. Being good and smart and quick in class meant he could stay. Being good also meant he had to be better, because wasting his dad’s money wasn’t an option. And of course, no Rozanov could show his face as a failure and dishonor the family.

If Ilya wants an escape, the rink is where he goes. Coaches are happy to give him pointers because he learns fast. He’s the best out of everyone on the ice, and everyone knows it. Ilya Rozanov is the one to watch because he’s going to go far. He’s got a mouth, and he backs up every thing he says.

Ilya is good, and he spends a lot of time on the ice. Of course he rose to the top like cream. He’s smart and he picks up concepts like nobody else in the whole junior league. His long legs offer a perfect tool for the amazing coordination he’s got, so he’s fast and precise on the ice in a way that most teenage boys are not. He’s spends so much time skating, it’s like breathing. It doesn’t look like he’s trying, and next to everyone else his quickness and observation skills look professional. He’s the whole package. Ilya is everything a hockey player should be.

And then the year he hits the NHL draft pool, he’s drafted first.

There’s his golden ticket, straight to the U.S. and a legacy team that needs a shot of excitement and victory that Ilya can give.

Ilya likes hockey, he’s good at it, and he works, but it’s more natural. It’s less of something he could explain. It’s where he goes to be free, until it becomes another point of leverage and pressure and expectation. It’s not his obsession. It started as “hey, I’m good at this and I don’t have to go home yet.” Hockey was the golden ticket. (Eventually, hockey will give him a Home too.)

I think Ilya will only ever rise as high as his competition makes him, as far as that irresistible hit of fun will take him

Shane is the one who will reach further and higher and deeper for the sake of the game, for the high of striving and accomplishment unending.

They each approach the game differently, I think. This is the vibe I get.

I don’t know. Just some thoughts that have been knocking around in my brain.

#heated rivalry #shane hollander #hollanov #ilya rozanov #game changers #headcanon time #the menace rambles #heated rivalry headcanon #game changers headcanon #hollanov meta #Shane Hollander meta #Ilya Rozanov meta #heated rivalry meta #Ilya is more talented and easier to throw things at and watch him pick them up quickly #Shane is hungrier and more obsessive and will learn something to perfection before he also learns to break it #Shane does it for the love of the game #Ilya does it for giggles because his bandwidth is wider

Some of the fandom has definitely uncritically decided "Shane has a high hockey IQ" and "Shane sees the ice differently from everyone" and "Shane isn't the most physical player but he's the fastest and/or smartest" and it's like for fuck's sake you might as well just say he's good at math and belongs in the chess club.

Some of the fandom has also definitely uncritically decided "Ilya is the more physical player" and "Ilya is an explosive skater" and "Ilya is always getting into fights/has an aggressive play style" (he's not, he's a ragebaiter not a fighter) and at that point you could just as easily call him a big Russian brute.

My kingdom for a little reflection on the biases people are bringing to these characters' play styles, especially given how relatively little canon information we have to work with on their actual technical abilities on the ice.

#ilya voice: they basically tie for fastest skater #they break each other's records for shot accuracy #I will MAYBE accept that Ilya is slightly flashier #The Rozanov as described sounds flashy to me but its obviously reliable enough to be used in games #I'd love to see a fic where actually ILYA is the one who spends all his time reviewing tape #Ilya as the one who constantly puts the work in on the hockey of it all instead of just playing well and giving good speeches #And Shane is the one for whom the hockey itself comes naturally as breathing #His dedication shows up in optimizing his life to Serve The Goal Of Hockey #shane hollander #shane hollander meta #ilya rozanov #ilya rozanov meta #heated rivalry #heated rivalry meta

the reason svetlana and ilya are such good friends is that she was there for him after his mom died btw

like obviously there’s a lot of stuff going on in that friendship, but i cannot stress enough how much the fundamental beating heart of it is that his mom died and he was entirely alone and all the rest of his friends were so freaked out that they started backing away and svetlana just Didn’t. she showed up over and over and over again and figured out what he needed by trial and error and witnessed his grief. she spent years witnessing it, learning its patterns, getting to know how he carries it. she’s been there for the whole thing. she understands it (and therefore him) in a way no other person in the world ever has, will, or could. and that’s a bond you carry for life!!

#ilya rozanov #ilya rozanov meta #svetlana vetrova #svetlana vetrova meta #heated rivalry #the blogger speaks #irina rozanova #the blogger speaks (about irina)

The fact that on Rachel Reid’s official website you can find a “deleted scene” where one of Ilya’s teammates makes a homophobic rape joke about Shane and Ilya does nothing to interfere or redirect the conversation, just smirks because Ilya “knows the truth.”

GOD I HATE THIS WRITING OF HOCKEY CULTURE.

Ilya would fucking never.

“But T,” you say, “Lev is talking about a consensual “gangbang.””

And well, no he’s not. The language of “teammates line up” in any context but especially in the context of hockey players implies that there is no consent or that is consent is dubious at best.

The “joke” is not: “Shane asks for it from the whole team” or even “Shane enjoys taking it”. The joke is that he takes it. Takes it does not specify consent but fine maybe Lev there means that Shane does consensually take it.

“His teammates line up” EXPLICITLY strips consent from this situation. Now it’s no longer about Shane being gay, it’s about a situation in which Shane is having gay sex and his teammates “line up.” Lev is implying a situation in which Shane’s teammates line up to fuck him and Shane doesn’t object, not that Shane is consenting to individual sex with each of them. This is a joke about people lining up to have sex with someone who isn’t saying no. Not someone who says yes.

If Lev wanted to say Shane was gay and also promiscuous he would said Shane asked for it.

But in this case “Shane takes it” and “his teammate line up.” It’s a joke about group sexual violence. If that wasn’t RR’s intent, that’s what she wrote. It’s a rape joke about Ilya’s boyfriend that Ilya doesn’t respond to in any way internally or externally except for a “they don’t know the truth.”

Would Ilya have said something? Maybe not. Should Ilya have said something? No I don’t think he should’ve because he had to question his safety in that moment. Should Ilya have had any sort of internal reaction to the literal rape joke about his boyfriend? Yes.

But RR wrote that deleted scene without intention and I can guarantee she doesn’t realize she wrote a character making a rape joke/comment

#heated rivalry meta #Rachel Reid critical #I didn’t know this scene existed until recently and it made me sick #ilya rozanov meta