Be nice to me I have a concussion

Shane starts getting grays at 35, so by 45 he is a salt-and-pepper kING. It makes for a distinguished photograph on his memoir. He has a ghostwriter, obviously, how do you expect him to just sit and write all day? He writes the chapter about his and Ilya's rivalry though, only at the end of the chapter is he like "And we were married in the summer of 2021 with a honeymoon in Spain. He's the best person I know." after just a dry comparison of all their stats Pre-Centaurs.

One child. Boychild. Shane's genes and a Russian name. Conceived via surrogacy after Ilya retires first due to busted ass knee syndrome. Child enjoys hockey. Not great at it. Looooves playing the oboe in school band. Shane checks it out and AS IT TURNS OUT the oboe is a difficult, competitive instrument. They proceed with characteristic intensity, as if this was athletics. Son, you're gonna win at the oboe.

Ilya needs glasses. He just steals Shane's off his face and it's a whole ritual that ends in them kissing. Boychild is mortified every time they're trying to read a take-out menu.

Shane gets into hockey commentary/podcasting and is notoriously. Um. Not Nice. A lot of "What?? What did I say??" It's never personal though. Just about players' shitty game.

Ilya is Big. Chunky. He's glorious. Muscle that now has fat over it. Arms like tree trunks. Torso: round. 100% Naturalized Canadian Citizen Beef. Hair, everywhere. Shane must BITE to check it all out and make sure everything is in order.

Shane gets really into individual athletics- rock climbing, marathons before he also gets busted ass knee syndrome, biking, swimming, anything where it's like testing the limits of his body against himself. Ilya is like a "fifty push-ups every day keeps me in shape enough to fuck you right" kind of guy, but he joins in sometimes just to make Shane get furious with competition

New rookie/juniors player billeting every year once boychild goes to music conservatory so they build a whole separate wing for the youngsters so it doesn't interfere with empty-nest fucking

Once they hit 50 they do get up stupid early like old men do and have old man coffee shop time with David Hollander (professional boring old man) at their favorite diner. Shane really cherishes this time with his dad and makes it a point to do it as often as they can. Conversely, they build Yuna a mother in law house when David passes away (death comes for us all) and she becomes crazy hockey mom to all their rookies.

Shane is terrorising the local birdwatching community

Ilya is personally if inadvertently responsible for at least four divorces among his kid's schoolmate's parents

every time they attend a Centaurs game they end up on kiss cam (which isn't even a THING Shane is convinced they do this just to fuck with him) and they always pretend to be reluctant and roll their eyes and oh, fine, if you insist *smooch* *deafening cheers*

My Heated Rivalry journey continues. All recs are Hollanov, including one Wyatt/Lisa fic. ❤️ denotes favourites.

💠 earlier Hollonov recs | acari recs masterlist

🔸️a wolf in a birdcage by bannerthyme (M, 15k)

When Ilya Rozanov moved to Ottawa to be closer to Shane, he thought he'd made the right decision. Instead, he finds himself in a prison of his own making, desperate to make his cage feel like a home, and convinced that he can solve every issue in his life with a new coat of paint.

Unfortunately, nobody around him seems to agree.

The paint eating fic. Ilya is having a bad mental health episode. This one hurts.

🔸️Adjustments by sheepknitssweater (E, 3k)

Shane had been sucking Rozanov’s mostly soft dick for between six and eight minutes. Since all the most important moments of Shane’s life were timed, he had a good internal clock. He was pretty sure it had been eight minutes.

I love precise, concise language. This fic packs a punch in very few words as far as characterisation goes.

🔸️black dog by delagauchetiere (E, 68k)

Ilya is not going to steal Shane Hollander's dog. That would be illegal. And wrong. And someone would probably find out and make Ilya give him back.

So. Not stealing.

But there is nothing wrong with giving Chernysh all the pats and treats that he deserves, is there?

Nothing wrong with encouraging Chernysh to spend more and more time at Ilya's house until he doesn't even remember who Hollander is.

Because Hollander is stupid and boring and does not deserve a dog as good as Chernysh. No, he doesn't, does he? Because Chernysh is the best boy in the whole world, yes he is.

This is so comforting and sweet.

🔸️Clean Sweep by YankingAwry (E, 29k)

Shane’s brain cycled rapidly through a half-dozen celebrities, porn actors, Grindr profiles, every attractive bartender who’d ever served him a beer, trying to find a comparison for this level of outrageously concentrated beauty in one person, but he was drawing a blank.

The man—Ilya Rozanov, Facilities Attendant, his badge read—gestured around the supply closet. “I help you find something?”

--

Canon-divergent AU set during the 2017-18 MLH season. Shane Hollander doesn’t have a single Cup to his name when he meets a very hot and very annoying janitor who works at the Metros stadium.

This fic contains probably the sentence of all time: Time, like Shane’s cock, spasmed.

🔸️mirage by ann_sable/ @sablesaysann (M, 8k)

Ilya discovers that he can control time. Now he's on a quest to prevent his mother's suicide.

Enter Shane Hollander.

Enter Shane Hollander.

Enter Shane Hollander.

I usually strongly dislike time travel fics, but something about this tickled me.

🔸️(Oh I believe in) Yesterday by queengoose (Lisa/Wyatt, T, 9k)

Time loops are just a fact of life to Wyatt, insane as that sounds. He’ll happily settle in for a repeat day every couple of weeks. Chances are he’ll wake up tomorrow morning and go to regularly scheduled practice. A teammate probably pissed off their wife, which is an easily fixed problem.

Or, the Wyatt-Hayes-centric-time-loop-Boxing-Day-fight-fix-it-fic

Wyatt gets time looped thanks to Ilya & Shane's TLG Boxing Day fight. I love Wyatt & Lisa's relationship in this. I read time loop fic, and I liked it (gasp schock).

🔸️the one hand rim-rocker by tedyexe (E, 9k)

At some point their relationship got fucked up enough that Ilya helps wax Shane’s pubes when they’re in town together, instead of doing normal couple things like watching Iron Chef or having brunch. Ilya thinks it started happening around, after the time he had to beg Shane not to bleach his asshole but before they both started peeing while taking showers together. “I just want a clean slate,” he tells Ilya very seriously, but they come to a compromise that he should keep something short and trimmed above his dick. Ilya, on the other hand, is under strict instruction to never touch any of his pubic hair, lest Shane have nothing to hold on to when he’s working the head with the back of his throat, so it’s kind of a shock when he says, “We should wax your ass too.”

Or: Ilya Rozanov gets fisted.

This is the best kind of PWP, the one used for character exploration.

❤️ progression by conturbat_me/ @yield-to-the-night (T, 38k, WIP)

Yuna doesn't like him.

Such a great character exploration piece as Yuna & David take the long way around towards warming up to Ilya. It's painful at times, heartwarming at others, but it all rings very true.

🔸️Ripe by saltandbyrne (E, 22k)

Ilya spits, and Ilya swallows.

If you enjoy the thought of worn jockstraps and Shane being good for Ilya, this fic is for you. This is so fucking horny and messy and full-bodied.

🔸️show me how to be whole again by @rozanohwell (E, 48k, WIP)

“They tell me he is learning to walk again,” a shirtless Rozanov says to the semi-circle of microphones in front of him, hands on his hips, still damp and flushed and riding that victory high. “Is good news, but little children can walk. I am interested when he will learn to skate again.”

After suffering a career-ending injury, Shane Hollander is struggling to connect with the world. Ilya Rozanov is more than happy to help in the only way he knows.

Idk what fandom communities y'all were hanging around in back in the day but when I first got online, there really wasn't this culture of "If you don't have something nice to say, say nothing at all". Negative criticism was normal! It was common! It was even considered bad form by some to leave a comment with only praise! I remember writing comments where I apologized for having only good things to say. Complaining about "flames" (=negative comments) was seen as immature and, often, an invitation to be even more harshly criticized. Like, the most you could ask for was for criticism to be "constructive", if you asked for only positive things, you would be seen as a whiny crybaby.

And that's just the comment section. Fandom at large definitely didn't think we should all be nice to each other. There were multiple LJ/JF communities dedicated to making fun of "bad" fanfic, and these weren't run by kiwifarm-types looking in, but by fellow fans! Fellow fanfic authors! People would collect funny or awkward quotes from fanfic to laugh at, post them with links, and even make graphics and icons to make fun of them.

And the MST3Ks! Remember that? Remember how there were LJ communities where people would post someone else's fanfic and then go through it sentence-by-sentence specifically to make fun of it?

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

some popular some not so popular fics that i adore. asterisks are favs that i can't be normal about.

character study

rookie of the year by medric / @bluegrasshole*

rozanov – not on hockey / vdud' (eng) by werevolche / gotthesunshinex *

mosquito by gone_girl

au (hockey, or not)

vessel by medric / @bluegrasshole*

clear to a hedgehog by @magneticwave*

for the right reasons by @citrusses*

house of mirrors by ratherunnecessary

win and bear it by anonymous (public plea to please...update)

hurts so good (angst/whump)

penalties by @citrusses*

show me how to be whole again by @rozanohwell*

send me back a thousand days by @rozanohwell*

if only a prayer by absolutelyhollanov*

dogging by @radialarch

everything else (yum yum )

running down the hills by hockeyfinches

ballad of a bisexual terminator by pressuretoparty

torture me (with all i’ve wanted) by toomuchplor

like for like by @smugrobotics*

love takes a mile by corsi

that'll leave a mark by subcorax

forget there's any other place by anonymous

$ $ $

i don't understand why so many people think ilya is the opposite of fastidious or neat (and conversely that shane IS suuuuper fastidious or neat as a joyful characteristic).

they are both rich guys with people who are paid to clean up after them literally 24/7 at home and at work. their houses and clothes and dishes will literally not be dirty.

hockey players are notoriously superstitious and demanding about how they want their equipment, their set-up, and their routine. and they spend their lives on the road. packing and unpacking the same bags, taping the same stick, being ironed down by the same hegemonic-conformist culture. they get real good at it.

shane has specific anxiety around being gay/changes affecting his hockey specifically and that drives his devotion to not deviating from routine -> and if that reads as OCD, then compulsive checking does not equal fastidiousness, its an attempt to regulate his internal world thru his external world. if it's autisim, then resistance to change, focused interests and sensory reactivity are literally textbook and it's an attempt to regulate his external world thru his internal world, which can or can't be fastidious/neat.

ilya specifically demands control in his life to an exacting degree that requires work and attentiveness because he was stripped of it in childhood. this manifests in attention to details, control over situations and people, and purposeful approaches to his actions and others: - in his super neat home where yes everything is labelled by his nutritionist/cleaned by a housekeeper but he cares about just how cold shane's ginger ale is etc. sets a timer for the sammies and controls his own emotional activation w his family before returning to the couch bc he wants to convo to go a certain way/also pushes shane through the convo - in conversations like sochi/post first time anal/shane panicking at the cottage/sveta jane-pushing/etc. where he shuts down or pushes paths of action/non-action and controls the tone and information being conveyed. - in his appearance/fashion with his curated and rich and clean outfit choices and well kept hair. - in the club when he may be seen as 'messy' by being promiscuous but he deliberately chooses to go out as a coping technique and rejects or picks girls to get with and is very forthright about it from all we can see -- not misleading or letting it get in the way of other things. - in family matters keeping track of his father's abuse/demands towards ilya and then his father's medications/illness/QOL as well as being the primary monetary support for all his relatives with listed examples bc he knows what the money is being spent on! and criticizes his brother for not being as organized. and puts money and gifts in a trust for his niece and sets boundaries to what alexei gets/does not get. - in sex with shane where he guides shane and takes his time with each act, likes to be called by honorifics, likes to order shane around, likes to have all of shane's complete attention and often cleans up quickly. - in his plans for the future where he makes plans about his relationship with shane and tries to make conversations/interactions go just how he imagines them. thinks about signing with boston and thinks about his contracts and his immigration status and how to get what he wants. - etc. etc. i could go on

ilya demands high levels of performance from people as a captain and as a lover and can be very hard to please. locker room: you fuckers each owe me 3,000$//cottage couch vacuum blowie. in hockey/sex, his intense drive and agitator antics mean, if anything, he is aware of mess and how to cultivate the illusion of it or take advantage of it.

shane and ilya do not have to be the opposites in everything. in fact, they are very similar in many, many ways.

i think people are overly invested in false dichotomies in life. they want a binary system to help them actualize how things are in opposite to something else, not as the thing exists. because that is fundamentally less labor, to just say. oh thing 1 vs thing 2. but these are illusory, reductive dichotomies: male is not the opposite of female, curly hair is not the opposite of straight, blue eyes are not the opposite of brown. etc.

so how i think this 1 vs 2 seeking philosophy presents itself in fandom is that have one character who performs at just the same level as another and doesn't show signs of being particularly messy in any way getting labelled as messy/unorganized, simply because the other character has been labelled as neat/meticulous.

also specifically i wonder if ilya's slyness and meanness is just twisted into being messy in an attempt to soften it or reduce it to something cutesy that shane can take care of as an attempt to ""power balance"" their D/s.

--