#myshane

“I don’t mind,” Shane says, hovering awkwardly in the doorway, “Um. You staying over. I mean, obviously. I’d be an asshole to kick you out.”

Ilya is used to him, by now; the way it can sometimes take a few seconds or minutes for Shane to get to the fucking point, mincing his words and dancing around whatever it is he’s actually trying to say. In anyone else it would be unbearable, but Ilya is finding it harder and harder to begrudge Shane anything.

It’s a scary thought, so Ilya schools his expression into something close to nonchalance, and shrugs. His bare shoulders brush the fabric of Shane’s fancy headboard. “If you want me to stay, I stay. If not, I go home. I’m not homeless, Hollander, I have my own bed.”

All of Shane’s peculiarities, all of his strange quirks and habits, have made a home in the back of Ilya’s mind. The old-fashioned alarm clock on the nightstand so he doesn’t have his phone around the bed, now blinking just past 5AM. The dimmer switch in every room because he hates overheard lights, the way he’ll transfer $500 to Ilya’s checking account every Friday because aren’t college students supposed to have fun on Fridays?

It’s Saturday morning, now. Shane is pulling a T-shirt over his head, sweats to cover the hickeys on the inside of his thighs. Ilya blinks once, twice, then looks away.

“I know you’re not homeless,” Shane scoffs, but it’s not mean, or mocking; if anything it sounds closer to fond, which only adds to the creeping, sickly feeling of anxiety growing in Ilya’s chest. “There’s a keycard on the counter in the kitchen, and you know the door code, so come and go as you want while I’m gone.”

“You can be an asshole,” Ilya says, biting down on the urge to snap at him. It’s not Shane’s fault if he’s never had this kind of arrangement before, not his fault if he thinks he has to be kind and charming for Ilya to sleep with him. “You barely know me, Hollander. You shouldn’t let strangers just come in and out of your apartment.”

Shane shrugs again, seemingly unwilling to take the bait. The more he resists, the more Ilya feels the itch, the tickle under his skin begging him to pick a fight. A big one. An excuse to say awful, hurtful things; maybe then Shane will understand who he’s dealing with, here, and why the kindness and the blushing and the thoughtful gestures aren’t necessary, or deserved.

“You have finals next week, right?” Shane asks, rhetorical, because Ilya saw it marked on his fucking calendar. His physical fucking calendar. ILYA - SMALL ANIMAL DENTISTRY FINAL on Tuesday, and ILYA - DIAGNOSTIC IMAGING FINAL on Friday. He has more, obviously, but those are the two he mentioned to Shane. The ones he’s worried about, because they’re the classes in which his grade is the lowest. Probably because he goes straight from hockey practice to class, and he’s usually exhausted by then. Shane keeps talking, pulling his jacket on and pulling Ilya from his spiralling thoughts. “It’s a quiet place to study. Housekeeping will keep kitchen stocked, so, y’know. You can help yourself.”

It’s fucking obscene. Shane Hollander is the captain of a Stanley Cup winning NHL team, and they’re headed to the playoffs in a month, and he’s wasting his fucking mental space on Ilya’s finals and his practice schedule and the fucking quality of his study space.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

Hollanov Summer Exchange Reading List Part 4: 5k-8k words

AO3 Collection | Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

The Record for Shot Accuracy

Teen | 5.2k words

All-Stars Weekend 2017 features the event of the decade: Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov playing on the same team. The entire hockey world can't wait to see what happens on the ice. Three things that someone else sees off of it.

Melting the ice (literally)

Mature | 5.3k words

"Shane had rolled his eyes about it at first, but then slammed the window shut a bit too enthusiastically once the outside world had decided to greet him with what he would describe as the inside of a running convection oven. It's fine, they're in the middle of their summer break - and the A/C is working smoothly. Until it isn't." --- What happens when a major heatwave hits Ottawa in the middle of summer? The A/C decides to go *fuck y'all, bye*, of course. Because what else could it possibly do? Keep the inhabitants of the Hollander-Rozanov household nice and cool?! Hah. Nope. Anyways, Ilya and Shane are making the best (worst?) of it.

incoming call: lily

Teen | 5.4k words

"Shane." His mom gently shook his good shoulder, rousing Shane from a very pleasant and drugged-up sleep. He blinked a few times, still unused to the bright fluorescence of the hospital lights. He briefly wondered if there was a way he could ask them to turn them down. Did hospital lights dim? They should. "Your phone is ringing. Do you want me to answer it?" "Whosit?" he slurred, his tongue not fitting right in his mouth. Is that something he should talk to the doctor about? He was pretty sure a too-big tongue wasn't a side effect of a concussion or a broken collarbone. "Um."Mom's eyes flitted from Shane's phone to his face and back again. "Someone named Lily?" It came out as a question, her intense stare suggesting it wasn't the one she wanted to ask. or; after he is injured on the ice, shane spends his recovery in his childhood home. and someone named lily won't stop calling him

baby monitoring

Teen | 5.7k words

Shane presses closer, hooking his chin over Ilya’s shoulder. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe I am your baby.” 5 times people overhear Ilya calling Shane “baby” and 1 time Shane says it instead.

enough for now

Explicit | 6.1k words

The night of his 3rd Stanley Cup win, Shane comes home to a surprise

let the ink dry

Mature | 6.7k words

Shane and Ilya leave a lot of marks on each other over the years.

given unsought

Mature | 7.2k words

Shane walked away from their first meeting mostly thinking god, what a fucking jackass. That, and the itch around his wrist.

it's not a barrier (если мы сможем его преодолеть)

Explicit | 7.7k words

“Ty tak-jya gorsh-ashasha,” Shane muttered and Ilya burst out laughing. Shane glowered, sprawled on top of him. “Hey, don’t fucking laugh. I’m trying here.”

Love-In-Idleness (Purple With Love's Wound)

Explicit | 7.7k words

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!

While the big annual survey continues (until 13th August), I'm here to give you the results of the nonbinary name survey!

This is on the blog because it's technically a side survey for fun. The survey ran from 5th July to 3rd August, and there were 11,340 usable responses. You can see the spreadsheet of results here.

The required opening checkbox was intended to make sure that everyone fit the usual criteria:

Yes, I confirm that I don't really fit into just one of the two boxes of "always, solely and completely a woman/girl" or "always, solely and completely a man/boy".

Top 20 names

Alex (1.01%, 204 people)

Jay (0.69%)

Sam (0.51%)

Charlie (0.49%)

Robin (0.48%)

Rowan (0.41%)

Ash (0.40%)

Max (0.33%)

Lee (0.31%)

Eli (0.31%)

Kai (0.31%)

Moss (0.29%)

Quinn (0.28%)

Wren (0.28%)

Aster (0.28%)

Jamie (0.28%)

Kit (0.26%)

Jack (0.25%)

Morgan (0.25%)

Ari (0.24%, 49 people)

Here's that top 20 as a graph, for the visual-brained folks:

The gender intentions of 18 of the top 20 names was "gender-neutral"; the two exceptions were Eli and Jack, where people were more likely to be aiming for something more masculine.

Here's the last name survey I ran, in 2023. The design was quite different, but the top 4 were the same names in the same order. The top 10 are the same names in a different order, but with one change: last time Kit was in the top 10 (this year it's at #17), and this time Lee is in the top 10 instead (last year it was #20).

This time I gave participants three slots to enter names. 20,118 names were entered in total, of which 2,358 (about 12%) were entered more than once. 22% of participants used all three slots, which seems like a lot to me, and maybe if I do this again I should provide more slots.

There were 8 names in the top 100 where people entering that name were more likely than not to be keeping a birth name:

Hannah (93.8% of Hannahs were keeping a birth name)

Elizabeth (93.3%)

Emily (91.3%)

Anna (86.8%)

Sarah (84.4%)

Emma (84.2%)

Laura (80.8%)

Claire (75.0%)

On the flipside, there were seven names entered over 20 times that were exclusively chosen by the participants themselves:

Aster (56 participants)

Rain (39)

Crow (29)

Niko (25)

Nyx (24)

Elias (22)

Briar (20)

Here's a graph of the gender intentions of each name:

Of the names that were not given at birth, here are the gender intention options and their top 3 names in each:

Gender-neutral:

Riley (74.2%)

Quinn (70.2%)

Sasha (68.8%)

Nonbinary:

Echo (50.0%)

Moth (35.3%)

Mars (34.1%)

Feminine:

Luna (64.5%)

Alice (34.3%)

Willow (30.3%)

Masculine:

Oliver (75.6%)

Alexander (70.6%)

James (65.9%)

Which means, this time, we have achieved our goal and discovered that:

the nonbinariest name is Echo! (24 people, 0.12% of participants.)

the most common name among nonbinary people is Alex, with an incredible ~1 in 100 nonbinary people going by this name.

And finally, despite the stereotype that nonbinary names are all three characters long, the most common number of characters in all names entered (including every name entry counted individually, and including names entered only once) is 4 or 5. Here's a graph:

As promised, the full spreadsheet of results doesn't contain individual responses, and any name entered only once is left out of the list. This is because names are identifying information and I don't want to risk anyone accidentally outing themselves due to having a very unusual or unique name.

Here's the results spreadsheet link again. Enjoy!

[ Take part in the 2026 Gender Census before 13th August 2026 ]

Changelog:

But last week they had to install new security cameras on their house because their outing made them Actual Famous instead of just Hockey Famous and there have already been threats, at least one of them credible. And two weeks ago SNL aired a skit about them the punchline of which was basically just the worst moment of Shane's life played over and over again for laughs. He is so afraid that Ilya is going to start wanting to die again that it keeps him up at night. He's trying to Amy Dunne Cool Girl it through so many different things. Food, social events, sometimes even sex although this is in the context of sex being one of the only times he feels fully normal and he is trying to frame this as the natural result of being a newlywed instead of as physically needing his body reset, sometimes several times a day. So he's coaxing Ilya into the bedroom and he's smiling and saying, "I just can't keep my hands off you," and what he really means is please put your hands on me and hold me together for a little bit longer but even he doesn't really know that's what he's asking for.

He is actually, genuinely happy to get to play hockey with his husband. Just as happy as he used to be when they played against each other all those years--which are such fond memories now tarnished by the constant fucking cheating allegations.

He's happy that he gets to walk down the street with his husband now--of course he fucking is. But again: they are Actual Famous now and the media cycle is obsessed with the idea that their marriage is essentially one of convenience and hurdling towards disaster. The prevailing theory is that they were caught essentially hooking up and had to marry each other as a PR move. Nevermind the multiple times that they have alluded to the timeline of their relationship.

And there are stressors that have nothing to do with fame, really. The owner of a local Russian restaurant recognizes Ilya just as a customer one day while he and Shane are sitting on the patio of a coffee shop having lunch and the restaurant owner approaches Ilya and just launches into a conversation in Russian and Shane is halfway out of his seat before he realizes that Ilya is smiling and doesn't seem threatened. He has to walk around the block to calm himself down.

It gets to the point where he is just constantly low-level buzzing and he only feels absolutely normal when he is alone with his husband, usually when he's literally under him, and when he's on the ice.

WORKS HAVE BEEN REVEALED!

AO3 COLLECTION

Please enjoy the over 367k words our participants wrote for this exchange!

Don't know where to start? We'll post a daily Reading List for next five days! We'll also hold a short rec fest!