kind of warm like a microwave

the closest thing to real soulmates you can find

we fought in the same trenches and have a warrior's bond that carries over into every stage of life

friend i sit next to in every class and pass notes to/whisper to constantly

academic peer/colleague that i respect and have a little intellectual crush on

neighbour in the same apartment block that i say hi to on the stairs

neighbour across the street who i wave at every morning and evening

we're regulars at the same bar

Not “My brother is terrible”

It’s “My brother is scared” and it’s because he’s scared that he acts terrible.

From what the audience has seen of his brother, he doesn’t deserve that kind of grace from Ilya. And yet, Ilya can look beyond his brother’s actions and words and see what’s at the core of him: a scared boy.

And then Ilya says, “It makes me terrible back.” Ilya doesn’t give himself the grace of saying something like, “I’m scared too. And it makes me terrible back.” Only that he acted terribly back at his brother. Yet all we’ve seen from Ilya is give his brother chance after chance and the only time we’ve seen him snap was when his brother insulted Svetlana.

for the record this is like 70% “i thought it was funny,” 15% boredom, 10% 2026 draft lottery trauma, and 5% continued efforts to stake our claim as most cursed team. anyway, cursed canucks web weave!!!

Shane as my dog Vinny

i speak english the most in day to day life and also think in english sometimes. my accent in english is americanized, pretty indistinguishable from a native (excluding sets of certain phonemes like /rl/) .

but if i’m really tired or spending time just around my wife (with whom i speak english), i sometimes switch to what i call ‘lazy english’.

what this usually consists of is i allow myself to speak english with the russian /r/ phoneme that is more natural for me, i drop articles, replace continuous and future tense with simple present, use the ‘….,yes?’ construct, avoid contractions (bc the verb ‘to be’ is dropped/implied in russian, so contractions aren’t always natural)

for example, when i’m in ‘lazy english’ mode, this is how my speech varies:

‘i’m making the bed’ = ‘i make bed’.

‘you’ll help me later, right?’ = ‘you help me later, yes?’ (for this one, in russian, the same phrasal construct ends with the word ‘yes’ instead of the word ‘right’)

‘can you give me a tissue?’ = can you give me tissue?’

‘where’s the pen? do you have it?’ = ‘where is pen? you have?’

if you pay attention, you’ll notice that a lot of these patterns also occur in ilya’s speech, especially earlier on. that’s why i’m particularly impressed with the writing of his dialogue — it doesn’t come across as stereotyping/caricatural because the way he speaks english is consistent with russian linguistic/grammatical rules. this is often how russian-speaking people speak english when it is their second language and they’re still learning.

you still want?

i still want

i wish i knew you before it felt like a sin

you and me (but mostly me)

shane hollander i love you so much!!! 🥺

I feel inspired..

Someone clips it and it goes viral.

Over the next few days, Shane and Ilya's mentions start to get flooded with pictures. Mostly it's screenshots from various games they played against each other, meticulously picked through by dedicated fans to find every moment Shane and Ilya looked at each other on the ice.

Some screenshots get shared by hundreds of different people because they stand out so obviously: Shane and Ilya meeting each other's eyes during a face off; Ilya looking at Shane while his back is turned, naked longing visible on his face; Shane chasing after Ilya with a small but delighted grin.

There are also pictures from press events, award ceremonies, behind the scenes at All Stars. Seemingly any time Shane and Ilya got captured in the same frame gets dug up and shared.

Finally, a couple of weeks later, the director of Shane and Ilya's CCM commercial posts outtakes from their shoot. It's captioned 'Took a bit of digging but I knew I still had these somewhere! I had to make my contribution to the #HollanovArchives even though this must have been a while before they got together. These kids had crazy chemistry, right from the start!'

Shane hasn't responded to the onslaught yet, too overwhelmed by the (slightly terrifying) dedication of their fans as well as the fact that he now has dozens of pictures clearly displaying his and Ilya's love for each other during a time in their lives when it was so desperately hidden.

He does respond now, sharing the director's post with a sincere (and publicist-approved) caption thanking him and the fans.