#shane thesis

[wtf-is-hockey]

Shane wants to be the best at hockey because it’s what he loves and Ilya loves hockey because it’s what he’s best at. There. Finally. Their relationships to hockey simplified to the lowest common denominator.

[castielchitaqua]

I feel like ive said this in multiple occasions, mainly in the tags of gifs because I am like that, but Ive been having many versions of the same thought brewing and rotating in my brain for basically a month. 

I know hollanov is way more than their sexual dynamic, but the first few ep of the series provide sooo much food for thought so I don’t feel bad about going on this particular tangent. the thing about shane is that he’s so controlled and contained all the time, he has to fit in the specific saw box that his momager and the media and himself have especially created for his public persona but sometimes the confines of how the world sees you and who you truly are get blurry. also he’s a teenager he doesnt know who he is all he knows is play hockey dont stare at your teammates when they shower. so he’s mostly well behaved and strict and controlled all the time and he doesnt indulge in thoughts about what he wants and what he craves, he has sex a couple of times with girls and he gets to have an orgasm about it and it’s so detached it’s almost medical but thats fine. enter ilya who is hot like burning and flirts and teases and pushes him in a way that feels a little different that pure sport rivalry. and the beast inside his belly starts stirring and moving and pacing in a way thats not familiar anymore (im guessing it was when puberty hit but then he squashed the immensity of his desire under the bricks with which he built his career and that worked till now). And this russian boy feels dangerous and the danger allows him to feel free, to detach himself from himself and explore what the beast wants. And the beast feels hungry and wants and actually gets what it wants in the purest form imaginable but now he knows what it’s like to desire and have his needs met and be sated (yes by this guys dick lodged deep inside his throat whatever). And the thing about desire is it never stops it’s never enough once you want you can never stop wanting and it claws at you until it can crawl out of you. so yes, no wonder shane was trembling with it in the vegas scene. he needed it in the most literal sense. 

[seventymilestobabylon]

"still mad about vegas?" / "I'm not mad about anything!" is the most Shane Hollander moment to ever Shane Hollander and it has informed every single one of the 80,000+ words I have written about Shane and Ilya navigating the first year of their Official Relationship. "I'm not mad about anything! moi? bothered? you think so WHY? because of the obvious vulnerability in my face? my big wet brown eyes? the way my whole body swayed towards your mouth and I wouldn't let myself have it? m o i? I am not. mad about anything. or upset at all."

[jesuisnilunnilautre]

shane hollander and the sword of damocles except he's not sitting on a throne with the sword above his head tied to a string he's face down ass up in his trophy room and the sword is ilya's cock and if he lets ilya get all the way inside him then a lever triggers and all the glass cases that hold his whole entire life shatter

[paperowl]

look at this mess. this used to be one fic in one text doc.

My author's note is more than 1k long and not even close to articulating anything. Just in case you were wondering why it got its own doc.

[wtf-is-hockey]

If I boil my Shane thesis down to a single sentence it’s “I’m used to it” and if I boil my Ilya thesis down to a single sentence it’s “There’s nothing I can do about it anyway.” If you even care.

[wtf-is-hockey]

And this is just me projecting sooo hard it’s embarrassing but for me like one of my most treasured Shane headcanons is that he was a very lonely child who couldn’t connect with others and who didn’t have friends. And then there was hockey. (I even like to headcanon that this is the real reason Yuna and David first got him into hockey. It wasn’t because hockey mattered to them, it was because they believed it would give Shane a chance at belonging somewhere. Maybe if their wasian son, already an outlier, who on top of that had all these quirks teachers got impatient with and kids made fun of, joined the most popular and widely-respected sport in the country, maybe he wouldn’t stand out so much anymore. Maybe if he had an excuse to be around other boys his age that didn’t allow for them to leave him out, he’d make some friends.) And then through hockey, he could make sense of his teammates the same way he could make sense of the game. And through being around them all the time, he could learn to imitate their behavior. He could begin to pick up on more and more social cues. He could begin writing social scripts. And then, better yet, he was so fucking good. And yes, he was constantly subjected to slurs. Yes, he was never given as much credit as he deserved. Yes, he had to work three times as hard to get the same standing as white players. Yes, to all of that. But also, some people admired him. Some people wanted to learn from him. Some people first gravitated to his talent, and after spending time with him trying to learn from him or use his skill to boost theirs - they also ended up gravitating to him. He had friends. Not many, and who knows how real, how conditional, how fully reciprocated those friendships were, but he had them for the first time in his life. And he had fun with his friends playing hockey, and being part of something, being integral to something, and yeah, being the best at something and having something to offer, something to always earn his keep, to always make being on a team with him worthwhile, and this is deep down why Shane loves hockey and why, as an adult, it’s not the same, and why the Metros turning on him is the most gut-wrenching tragedy, and why Shane first begins falling for Ilya. It’s not just that Ilya is an equal competitor. It’s also that Ilya never doubted Shane was an equal competitor and even more importantly than that, Ilya makes hockey FUN again.

[wtf-is-hockey]

I think I picture Shane being a very straightforward captain, more than anything. I don't think he's hard on players who need improvement in some area, who fucked something up. I think he just says very simply this is what you need to improve, this is how you do that. Or this is what you fucked up, this is how you avoid doing that again. I think he's the same way when they nail something or made something work. Very straightforwardly, you did that perfectly, or we won that game because of you.

When he does give pre-game speeches of some kind, I think it's very by-the-numbers. This is what we have to worry about when going up against this team. This is what we have that they don't. If we do this, we win.

I don't think he confronts anything that doesn't truly need to be confronted, but that he's there for any player who reaches out to him. I think he notices social issues the team has through their playing. He recognizes, oh, these two players aren't passing to each other as much as they used to, and this is causing problems - what happened there. And he'll talk to one of the players under the pretense of hockey strategizing, which will lead to them opening up about the real underlying issue. Sometimes, maybe, Shane doesn't realize there is an underlying issue, but since he always notices the way it affects gameplay, he ends up addressing the underlying issue one way or another. I also think he's generally nonjudgmental about whatever the underlying issue is. He generally doesn't take sides or care who did or said what. Not his business - just figure it out. Do whatever you have to do to play well again.

When he first became captain, I imagine this made others view him as a hard-ass or as thinking he's better than others - especially if on top of that, maybe Shane isn't going out with them much after practice, maybe he isn't participating in locker room talk or pranks, maybe he has some weird rules none of them are used to.

But I think over time, just like anything related to hockey, Shane would have strived to improve his captaining. He would have gotten to a point where he makes sure to compliment players when they do something well, where he says something encouraging or reassuring to a player who fucked up, where he defends a player being chirped, or chirps a player who deserves it. I think he would have practiced being purposely modest, taking accountability where he could for any shortcomings of his own. It's all a conscious effort. He has to remind him to do it, but he does it.

Players who shared a team with him for a long time would recognize that Shane's overall straightforward approach is nothing personal. Some would even admire it - it gets shit done, doesn't it? It works. That's all that matters, etc. At the very least, I think the team would respect it. New players would get a more approachable version of Captain Shane than older players had, but if any of them ended up having the same view of Shane as older players did when Shane first started out, they'd be able to vouch for him. Of course, they'd all, after a certain point, recognize that their captain is Shane Fucking Hollander, and that alone would carry quite a lot of credibility.

I think the older players have grown to love Shane like an acquired taste, while younger players are intimidated by him, and new experienced players have a hard time getting a read on him. But the older players who have been with him a long time set a precedent. They talk with Shane like any other teammate. They joke with him. They defer to him not just with hockey but often with other matters. Shane has learned how to socialize in this way, and with any topic that could cause him problems, he has a go-to out. If anybody does notice something, an older player will shrug and tell them that's just Shane, you'll get used to it, etc.

Yeah, it's weird that Shane has this no-talking-about-girls rule in the locker room, but that's because it keeps us focused on the game and because he's such a private person. Look, he looks a lot more timid than he is. The only reason he doesn't fight much is because he doesn't have to. Wait until you see him on a day he has to. No, he doesn't laugh at jokes like that but he's cool, he just doesn't pay attention to stuff like that. It's not like he's going to get on your case about it. You might think all he's got going for him is his hockey IQ, but he pushes himself harder than he does anybody else. That's why he hardly ever goes out. He doesn't even drink. And on and on and on.

By the events of the long game, Shane is a damn good captain who has spent years learning and perfecting his approach to it. No, he's not the charismatic and sociable captain who hypes everyone up and gives killer moral-boosting speeches, but he is the captain who gets shit done, and he has three cups to prove it.