who are the fantilli brothers.... and are they worth investigating in an rpf way if you dont already know who they are
they are the gold star of brother [redacted] if that's your kink (but you can guess which word i'm redacting from the content of this answer.) my tag for them is here and there's a lot of content of them in italy together (they are incredibly italian) where luca looks like adam's kept boy. exhibit a:
la has a great little write-up here, but the short version is that there are some celebrini parallels with the less talented older brother and star player younger brother (adam was a third overall pick for cbj, luca went undrafted) except where aiden sort of emerged as mack's keeper/mentor, adam basically revolved around luca like he was the sun himself. they're from toronto and the expectation was that adam would play junior hockey there, but luca (who wasn't talented enough? idk) went to play hockey at some prep school in the US and adam missed him so bad that he also went to go play hockey at that same prep school. (there is family lore about this detailed here; they took adam to visit luca a month or two into the school year and adam JUMPED out of the car to run and hug luca and they were like ohhhh okay it is that serious. um maybe we can get adam into this prep school too? then he basically had to hold a press conference about it (because toronto youth hockey is so toxic lol and they were all mad he left). anyway after that they were inseparable and they played together at the chicago steel, and then both got recruited to play for umich. all you had to do to get adam was recruit luca.
here's adam looking at luca after he won the hobey baker (ignore the bald spot idk what happened there. playoff mullet mishap maybe):
adam only stayed at umich for one year but don't worry they stayed weird about each other even after that. for SOME reason luca kept the name on his jersey as L. FANTILLI even though there was no longer an A. FANTILLI to confuse him with (and if i recall right, there were new jerseys that season so like. this was a very intentional choice):
and i'm sure you're all dying to know what adam thought of this! well don't worry, he made it loud and clear:
sure, yeah. keep the reminder on your back of the brother who always played by your side, who isn't there any more in a physical sense but who never left in a much more important way.
what else. oh on Inside Michigan Hockey Radio Show from 10/3/23 (so october, the very beginning of the first season they played apart in like 4 years), luca had this to say about adam:
Q: “You’re not playing with Adam for a change. Is that easier or harder? That’s a – that’s a tough question.”
Luca: “Yeah, I gotta say it’s definitely harder. I mean, he won the Hobey Baker last year so, any time that guy leaves your team it’s definitely a little harder. But I was telling the boys today I was having a ‘missing Adam day’ today. He sent me this TikTok and it said like stuff about your brother and I’m definitely missing him a little bit right now. But it’s the first time I haven’t played with him in a while but I’m just super proud of him and everything he’s doing down there.”
Q: “You probably stay in big contact with him though, don’t you.”
Luca: “Yeah, we Facetime every day and keep each other updated on how everything’s going. Yeah, it’s nice to see his face on Facetime, which is nice.”
A MISSING ADAM DAY. do you think mack has ever had 'a missing aiden day'?? like be for real with me right now. anyway there's a lot more in the tag (and i cannot emphasize how many more italy pics. like truly these two love nothing more than taking pics of each other in italy.) luca just graduated from umich (you know adam was there) so it'll be interesting to see what he does next with hockey.
hang on wait i'm worried someone might not check out all the italy posts and you guys NEED to know about this one. a couple of the pics adam posted in his dump, followed by luca's comment:
ellievsbear
discoholicmusic
2087
snowghoul
stormborns
tangentwithtanner
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
