Let's forget reality

you probably have expressed similar thoughts before but since you are one the few in the fandom that is critical of the Hollanders parents(without needlessly demonizing them,just as important l) i feel I can share my (apparently) hot take:

i really am tired seeing the narrative of "Yuna and David will be ilya's replacement parents/found family and he will finally know true parental love". it is not cute and fluffy, and the scenarios people come up with are deadly boring.

"aww, Yuna will spoon feed ilya soup and David will play catch with him"- i don't say this lightly, people who actually say that need to get back in touch to reality, like so much to unpack here.

i don't think it matters what your relationship to your parents is, in-laws are not a "replacement"(is this an american thing?in my country no one would think that),plus, Yuna and David canonically don't care about their own son like this, why and how would they be able to their kid's life partner?

this might be related to the average age of people on fandom but ilya is a grown ass man, he is fucking 26 when he meets the Hollanders so if they try sing him a lullaby or some shit(which they won't!) He will literally just leave, he is not a toddler.

i am probably meaner about those silly hcs than I should but seeing them everywhere bores me to tears. the relationship they will actually have will be strained and ten times more interesting. ilya seeing the dysfunction in the Hollander family dynamic and realizing unhealthyness comes in different forms? them, mostly Yuna tbh, resenting him because now Shane has more incentive to place boundaries between them, thus changing the status quo? yes, 20 fanfics like this please.

this would be easier to let slide if I didn't suspect this all just another way to mock and erase shane from the story- his white partner just being handed a support system that he never got from his emotionally neglectful parents? AND you frame this as some cutesy found family shit? count me out.

This is one of my oldest beefs with tlg. I was bitching about this before I even read tlg (1, 2), because I'd heard about it in advance and was baffled by how universally adored this aspect of tlg seemed to be.

I think it's as adored as it is for a lot of reasons. The first being, Reid quite literally wrote Yuna and David to be replacement parents for Ilya, and framed this as healing for him and endearing to the reader, and obviously, the book fandom is a biased sample pool in that, by virtue of the nature of fandom, it is primarily made up of people who liked tlg, which means people in the fandom are more likely to like this aspect of the book. I'm an outlier because I ended up in the fandom even though I have never hated a book more lmao.

It's also adored because fandom in general has become weirdly formulaic and prescriptive about the found family trope in recent years. This trope originally referred quite explicitly to groups of characters that don't fit into the nuclear family box, but because of people's unquestioned acceptance and belief in the nuclear family, they ended up twisting the meaning of the trope and now any time there's a group of characters who quite explicitly aren't a nuclear family, that fandom sets out to assign them nuclear familial roles anyway. Reid is really devoted to the nuclear family in her own work too. The romance genre in general is, and so you have the sample pool bias again - people who embrace the nuclear family and want to see it in fiction are more likely to end up reading tlg. But in any case, it's because of this that I think Reid felt it was appropriate to quite literally make Yuna and David Ilya's replacement parents, and I also assume that because of this she has a hard time conceptualizing someone being happy and well-adjusted to losing their parents without finding replacement parents.

The other thing I've noticed that happens is pop psychology nonsense bleeds into it. People like the idea of Yuna and David being Ilya's replacement parents as a way of "healing his inner child." This is why you see some of the more literal headcanons, I think, like David and Ilya playing catch, and why you see so many people talking about Ilya like he needs parents to take care of him despite him being a grown ass man. Reid even perpetuates this in tlg - there's a part I despise where Ilya is over at Yuna and David's during one of Shane's games, and they make him dinner and Yuna offers him ice cream after and Ilya is on the couch with a blanket eating ice cream and Ilya thinks something like "He felt like a little kid, and he was kind of enjoying it" and it is just so on the nose about sending the message that Ilya has found his replacement parents that are allowing him to have formative experiences he missed out on as a child and now that he's having them he's healing I guess. I hate it. But the fandom loves it, and I think that's what the idea behind a lot of headcanons related to Ilya and his relationship to Yuna and David as replacement parents.

Images from a Summer never was~

Inspired by the fact that it breaks my heart that Shane and Ilya have no pictures from the early years of their relationship 😭😭😭😭

(Zoom ins below the cut!)

i'd also love other fic recs for hurt!ilya <3

UPDATE: Fic Added ⬇️

Glass Closets and Thrown Stones

Shane and Ilya sign with Ottawa on July 1st 2018. It goes startlingly well (apart from all the bits that don't) reported that injury occurs towards the end

Here is what I could find. Does this fic sound familiar to anyone else?

all this effort, to make it look effortless 

Ilya wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. He was positive he didn’t have a concussion, he had landed on his shoulder. But everything had happened so fast his brain was having trouble catching up.

Bruises 

Rozanov takes a bad hit. Hollander sees it. Hollander stops being a functioning adult. There are bruises, tape, ice, kissing, and exactly zero emotional coping skills—followed by a center ice faceoff where Rozanov smirks like nothing happened. (Something happened.)

Not to make too many comparisons between fictional and real life people, but I was thinking about how the Victoire wives have I believe mentioned that they want to have kids, but how does one do that logistically when you’re both pro athletes? Does someone have to take a step back and who? Especially because they have a biological clock they’re running up against too as women. And how Stacey went down in Game 1 of the playoff final and MPP had to help her off and move the fuck on so she could win the game. How Stacey has had to consistently try to build an identity for herself that isn’t just “MPP’s wife” and feels like she has to prove (if only to herself) that she deserves her spot on the team and being one of the protected players during expansion.

And Shane is all blushy and shy and shut up Ilya and Ilya is like mm no I want to ask, I’d like to know. And Shane shrugs and he’s like I kinda didn’t. Not for a long time. I was too old maybe like eleven? Was only ever at night when if needed to sleep. I guess. And Ilya just hums, combs his hand through hands hair over the back of his head.

“And you stopped?” And Shane is quite quiet. “Got caught once, away game- guy I was rooming with saw and uh- thankfully he wasn’t evil enough to tell everyone but he called me baby the rest of the year and I just. The way he laughed at me. I don’t know” and Shane shrugs and it’s so quiet and Ilya plays with Shane’s ear, tugging and pulling at it. He’s quiet but Shane just knows that means he’s thinking.

His hands keep stroking over Shane’s face soft gentle touches. “Kids can be cruel” Ilyas says and Shane nods. They can. He’s hidden much of himself in the past for the same reason.

“It um. Helped you relax?” Ilya asks and Shane nods.

“Like now, with my cock” Shane slaps Ilya’s side once, open palmed and Ilya just catches his hand, squeezes it.

“Fuck off” Shane huffs and

“No, no- Shane I mean it, like it makes you, happy, calm- I’m not being a pervert. Mostly. But you like it yes? Like my fingers in your mouth hmm?”

And Shane huffs and nods and blushes and then it’s quiet again. Warm in their room, Shane kicks a leg out from under the covers.

Ilya’s hand smooths down the side of his face, fingers drag and then his thumb finds Shane’s bottom lip, rubs at it. Shane keeps his mouth shut the whole back of his neck tingling. Face hot.

He swallows and Ilya’s fingers curl gentle against his flushing cheek.

“If you want” he offers and Shane parts his lips, sucking a Ilya’s thumb into his mouth, on his tongue and between his soft pallet.

Ilya just hums happily, his other hand rubs up and down Shane’s back.

Shane feels struck, still, for a while and they do this al the time during sex, but it’s fleeting and it’s with a focus- to cum- to get off together. This. This is just for Shane. Just Shane’s comfort.

Ilya just keeps running his back and eventually Shane goes softer, looser heavier on Ilya and then his tongue is wet and hot and licking, sucking softly at Ilya’s thumb. His lips are pursed around Ilya’s knuckle, sucking, a little bit of saliva on his lips.

Shane falls asleep in minutes, tears simmering in his eyes, the feeling of being accepted, held. Understood. Like Ilya always did for him.

(Eep sorry if this isn’t ur vibe feel free to leave it here and not put it out but I just had do)

AHHH BUG THIS IS COMPLETELY THE VIBE

I saw this before work this morning and then I had to WORK and I was thinking about it all day ☠️☠️☠️

Ughhh I love it when big bad Ilya is also gentle loverboy Ilya. They are the same person they coexist that man contains all the multitudes. It's soooo hot to him that Shane needs his cock in his mouth on the regular to LIVE but on the flip side, the knowledge of WHY he needs it...the id of it all...the bits of Shane that only Ilya really gets to know because he's hidden and repressed so much over the years.

I absolutely lose it for dynamics that combine sexual and nonsexual intimacy. Cockwarming as comfort, obviously, but also this. There is nothing particularly sexual happening and neither of them is getting off on it but it's an echo of their first sex YEARS ago and they're both aware of it. There's also something to be said for it being vaguely taboo, which is inherently erotic. But then it's also, above all, Ilya offering comfort. Ughhh HUMANS we are all so imperfect and wonderful and wanting and perverted and loving. I'm not making sense

Omega Shane joins the harem out of spite. Even though Emperor Ilya changed the laws so omegas can inherit, his traditionalist parents chose his dumbass, shady Alpha cousin as the heir to the duchy instead of him. His parents started giving duties to the cousin, and Shane already knows it’s going to go badly and he wants to get the hell out of dodge. He also wants to be in a position where his parents can’t force him to go back and clean up their mess, so he decided to go to the harem selection. If chosen, his parents won’t be able to touch him and he can watch their downfall from the luxurious palace.

Svetlana takes one look at Shane and picks him immediately, not bothering to put his through all the tests. Svetlana orders Shane to be cleaned and dressed up. She brings him to Ilya and has Shane introduce himself. Ilya is about to tell Svetlana off for interrupting his work but his eyes lock on Shane, and suddenly he doesn’t care about the paper in his hand or all of the work he has to do. He just wants to be with Shane. Shane tells Ilya about his parents and at the very first fuck up, he strips them of their titles and gives them to Shane. He tells Shane their eldest will inherit the empire and their second born will inherit Shane’s titles.

What, you got tired of looking like shit?

However the drunk guys are also drinking, and eventually she can't afford to buy another pitcher for the table so she can't keep up the ever-full beer glass trick. At this point she has to resort to setting up the pool trick shot that she's never seen anyone but her boyfriend pull off, and says she'll leave with whoever manages the shot first.

It starts with Shane’s thirteenth birthday, or rather the lack of one. Up until that point the pages of photos had been interrupted every so often by dark lit images centered on a glowing cake and a slowly growing boy ready to make his wish, but for the year Shane officially became a teen, there’s nothing. Yuna huffs, commenting about how Shane had started focusing on his diet a lot more around that time, and Shane offhandedly remarks that he’s pretty sure he had a game that day. They’re sure they did something, they just don’t really remember what.

Other photos start disappearing too. Middle school marked the end of the first day photos, outings switch from hikes and zoos to dense city centers, friends don’t appear unless they’re wearing the same colors. It’s not that there are less pictures, in fact as Shane grew into a hockey star there were a lot more photos taken from a lot more people, but it was all hockey.

The next birthday photo that shows up is for Shane’s sixteenth. He much bigger, and instead of a cake there’s a single candle in a muffin. His smile is polite, nowhere near as joyful as his younger self. He doesn’t look like he’s going to make a wish. The background is blurred but it’s obviously a rink.

It’s weird, Ilya thinks, how sad it makes him when Shane doesn’t seem to think much of it.

“I was busy.”

He was busy.

Eighteen and tied up in the beginnings of the NHL. Just sixteen and barely able to spare a moment from practice. A thirteen year old too consumed in hockey for a cake.

which also leads to the very funny moment of the twins bringing their "captive" to king shane for judgement of his crimes and shane not even lowering his sunglasses and going "off with his head"

ilya is just D:< you will not even TRY to argue clemency?? for your HUSBAND???

"sir ruby, what are his crimes?"

"smashing the village and eating ALL the villagers >:D"

Shane is soooo needy.

I can’t share any more than this crop or the cops will come

MARAKOV (C) 24 - BARRETT 17 - KENT 32 - MEURIAX (A) 04

and on and on and on. and for a second ilya thinks holy shit, is this a list of shane’s freaky hockey sex dreams? so he all but runs downstairs, holds it out to shane and wiggles his eyebrows and says i found your sex diary, hollander, very scandalous. and shane looks so confused, because the only sex dreams he’s had for the past ten years have been about ilya (and once, embarrassingly, stephen colbert)

so he looks at the notebook and looks kind of embarrassed and says “oh. no, ilya, that’s not a freaky sex book. don’t be such a pervert.”

which, honestly, ilya is kind of relieved— he doesn’t want to think about shane having sex dreams about troy barrett. but shane still looks kind of uncomfortable, so ilya keeps prodding. and shane sighs heavily, like he really doesn’t want to say, like he’s ashamed, and says

“i just. i don’t know, i guess i knew we’d come out one day. or i hoped we would. so i wanted to write down whenever someone said something, like, homophobic to me. or racist, too, i guess. so when we came out, if these guys started being like wow fuckin’ a, boys, we love you guys, like. y’know. i’d have a record. that i’m not crazy.”

ilya frowns, and puts both of his hands palm-down on the counter; his legs suddenly feel very weak.

“not crazy?”

shane shrugs. “i mean, i’m not— chirping is one thing, y’know? i only wrote them down if it was really bad. like, slurs, and stuff. i don’t know. it’s stupid. i stopped after we got engaged, i just… it didn’t seem important anymore.”

and ilya isn’t sure what to say, standing like an idiot, eyes fixed on this unassuming, beat-up notebook that holds a record of all the times someone tried to make his husband feel small because it was the only way they could even think of getting a one-up on him in the rink. and that he’d written them down not as a way to try and get some small justice for himself, but, what? as a record. a list of names of people they couldn’t trust if they ever offered their public congratulations.

Happy Birthday Ilya!