A Robotic Work in Progress

~~~~~

Shane Hollander, with his growing interest in real estate, home design, and architecture, gets super into the subject and starts reading all about the different architectural movements of North America. While they don't quite outnumber the hockey books on his shelves, it's a near thing.

He reads everything he can about the settlements built by First Nations across Canada. About the European influences brought in by the French and English, the contrasts between Acadian architecture and those found in the Maritimes, so like the styles of coastal New England homes he sees in the States. Prairie styles and the Georgian revival, the Modernist movement versus Brutalism.

He keeps a mental Top Ten list of postmodern skyscrapers throughout Canada (with footnotes attached) and an impassioned lecture about the significance of the "Crystal" addition to the Royal Ontario Museum. He's also a regular visitor of the Art Gallery of Ontario whenever he's in Toronto, but he goes mainly for the buildings, not the art housed inside of them.

His obsession leads to a brief detour into the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which in turn results in an expensive and elaborate model train set built in one of the Cottage guest rooms and a random, intense appreciation for historic grain elevators.

His team isn't named after the transit system, of course it isn't, but Shane loves the Metro. Sometimes when it's too cold for a walk and he needs to get out of his apartment in Montreal, Shane rides back and forth to nowhere and lets the rhythmic sounds of the underground train soothe his mind and body.

He's almost always recognized on these late night excursions, and while he appreciates the times when his fans simply wave and then leave him be, he's also kind of amused by the Twitter account that collects fan pictures taken with him on the Metro, endless selfies of Montreal fanatics with their star Captain. A strange, unaffiliated mascot of sorts.

After the move to Ottawa, he tries riding the O-Train, but it doesn't hit the same.

Architecture keeps on being his thing. There's the deep dive he does into the Moorish Revival, endlessly fascinated by the old theatres that still exist in many MLH team cities--Atlanta, New York, Chicago, LA, all with grand old buildings to tour. Many of them are also pieces of film history, lofty gilded spaces where movies were shown until the theatres were repurposed for the performing arts.

He talks Rose's ear off about all of them and she drags him to one of her movie premieres in exchange. He hates the attention and the spotlight but loves the event itself, loves getting to see a new film before the general public does.

Shane travels so much for work, and there's not always a lot of free time, but every city he visits is bound to have the small types of museums that are simply an old family home built by someone of variable fame and fortune, preserved and frozen in time. The types that run little tours at seemingly random times of day, staffed by an elderly docent who is just so thrilled to tell him all about the place--about the family and their quirks (and sometimes scandals), and he's receptive and a good listener but also, unlike so many other tour guests, he's actually interested in the building process itself.

He wants to know what materials were shipped in from overseas and how, and why the owner chose to plonk a replica of a (lovely, but incongruous) Spanish villa in the middle of an area with no Spanish influence. Wants to know why the original architect of another project was fired and replaced with someone with less formal training and more delusions of grandeur, chosen only to indulge the whims of the owner as they chased notoriety via architectural madness and a doomed attempt at building a castle.

Whether alone or in a group, Shane is always a rapt audience, soaking up every story and asking the kinds of questions that show he truly knows his stuff, sometimes questions the docents don't know the answers to, but they get his information and promise to send on the answer once they find out. He leaves them all excellent reviews.

As Shane and Ilya are going through the box, Ilya pulls out a little Centaurs branded notebook, with "Shane's Fun Facts!" written on the front in sharpie. Ilya is understandably delighted.

"What is this?" he asks, smiling from ear to ear, quickly yanking it out of the reach of Shane who immediately tries to swipe it out of his hands.

"It's nothing," says Shane, but the way his cheeks have gone pink behind his freckles tells another story.

"Uh-uh. It cannot be nothing if you don't want me to see it this badly."

Turning his back to Shane so he can't easily grab at it, Ilya opens to a random page and reads in Shane's 8-year-old scrawl:

Lightning bolts are five times hotter than the sun. That is very hot!

Ilya is grinning even wider now.

"Wow, Solnyshko, that is a fun fact."

"Fuck off," Shane says. He doesn't even attempt to grab it again, just kind of collapses and bonks his head into Ilya's shoulder. "I used to have trouble making friends as a kid. Dad suggested I start collecting facts to use as icebreakers. Y'know, to get conversations going."

"Did they work?" asks Ilya, tilting his head so that it rests on top of Shane's as his husband gives an almighty sigh.

"I think they made it worse, actually."

Ilya turns to another page and reads it out loud.

"Oology is the study of eggs. It's so cool because it looks like there are three eggs in the word!"

"Oh god," says Shane, burying his face further into Ilya's neck.

"I think you knew all the worst kids in Canada," says Ilya, putting down the book and wrapping his arms around Shane. "Those facts would have worked on me."

"Really?" asks Shane, glancing up at Ilya's face to see if he's teasing him, but Ilya is being perfectly serious.

"Of course. You came up to me and started telling me fun facts straight away, remember? 'I don't think you can smoke here.' 'Wow, Rozanov, you are the best player ever to watch.'"

"Fuck off, I didn't say that," laughs Shane.

"Well, it was something like that," says Ilya, pressing a kiss to the top of Shane's head. "So at least the fun facts worked when it mattered, yes? Imagine where we'd be if you hadn't come over to break the ice."

And Shane tugs Ilya even closer.

Shane Enabler Hollander: ok so Ilyusha this player has had zero assists in the entire season, he got drafted last, and finally - and this is crucial - he once scored a goal in his own team's net

But, you also have the "more" of it all. Shane doing as he's told from the off; Ilya effortlessly slipping into the dominant role right from the start and Shane revelling in the submission, before they've even gotten physical with each other. And you have "no" in that Vegas bathroom. 'No, you are not in charge here'. 'No, you cannot have what you want, even though you did exactly as I asked'. 'No, this is not on your terms'. 'No, you will wait until I decide I want you'. And then you have Shane standing there, at the cottage, revelling in the fact that Ilya is finally here, in his space, with him. He's preening, patiently waiting for Ilya to touch him; for Ilya to kiss him; for Ilya to decide what it is they will do now. Because he's a good boy. He won't act out of turn. He won't presume he's owed a kiss. He will wait for Ilya to decide what he deserves.

Dom Edward was huge in the Twilight fandom. Where is he in the source material? Fucking nowhere.

People were twisting every Sherlock line into a possible indicator of a D/s dynamic, when even just the romantic relationship between Johnlock was never canonised.

We were out here writing the nastiest little BDSM fics for Klaine, for God's sake. Spinning gold from fucking nothing.

And then Heated Rivalry comes along and just... makes it canon? Holy shit. Truly incredible work. We are so used to giving and now we get to receive.

idk if this matters to anyone, except maybe for fic writing purposes?

re: Shane + the French language

tl;dr: in "Heated Rivalry" (TV), French, to show!Shane (and to Canada as a country) is not the same as what Russian is to Ilya (and Russia).

The scene in which Ilya is watching Shane talking to a reporter in French. That's the only time we hear Shane speak French. It's halting and unsure. His French accent isn't great (he can't get the French "r"s). Ilya can't understand him but is grumbling about how Shane is "perfect" and can answer questions in French.

This scene is IMMEDIATELY preceding the Nashville press conference scene. During which Ilya hesitates while trying to answer a reporter's question and Shane steps in to help.

What's so cool about those two scenes being back to back is that each scene provides additional context to the other.

Ilya is frustrated that Shane can be perfect while answering questions in his second language, not realizing that he (Ilya) is probably just as good if not better in his (Ilya's) second language than Shane is in his (Shane's). But it also shows how Ilya is nervous about sounding stupid when he speaks in his second language, so he keeps his answers so short. At the Nashville press conference: "still feeling like that's gonna happen?" / "yes." ; "what he said." It just so happens that his economy of words really works for his cocky asshole persona, but this is kind of a chicken and an egg situation. Did he decide to do the cocky asshole thing and then realize that keeping his answers short coincidentally and conveniently worked for that? Or did he start off giving short answers, realize that people were interpreting that as cocky assholery, and then lean into it because that's preferable to people thinking that he's nervous about sounding stupid in his second language?

It also shows that Shane totally knows what Ilya is going through when he hesitates after that question in Nashville. Shane has experience answering reporter's questions in his second language. Shane's answers in that interview were short, vague and kind of repetitive. How much of that is because he was just being diplomatic and how much was it because he didn't have to vocabulary in French to elaborate any further? Shane clocks the second language thing immediately because he's been there. And he's like, "I Can Fix This." And Shane uses his diplomatic, polite, media-trained, "perfect" press skills for Ilya's benefit, not to make him look bad. He even dresses it up with, "Sorry, not to jump the gun...with Rozanov's permission...my mom is the biggest Metros fan..." He made it look like he was jumping in because he was eager, because he already had an answer he was excited to share (the personal connection of his mom). He helped while making it look like Ilya was doing him a favor. And he repeated the question in his answer, to help Ilya understand and to give Ilya more time to think. This set Ilya up for the "what he said" joke, which got a laugh and allowed Ilya to keep up the cocky asshole image.

In the scene where Ilya's watching Shane be interviewed in French, Ilya is jealous. He thinks Shane is better than him. But they're SO similar, SO equally matched. Their rivalry is theatre which requires constant cooperation to maintain. They're each other's scene partners. The league and their teammates and the fans think that it's Hollander vs Rozanov. But in this Nashville press conference, we see how much it really is, as Scott says, "always Hollander and Rozanov, right?": in this together. Working together to help each other play their respective parts, just like in ep 2, onstage at the MLH awards in Las Vegas.

As someone who is NOT remotely familiar with the language, I can't really tell if Shane/Hudson's French is halted or accented or if his vocabulary choice is wrong.

What I do notice is that Shane seems calm, deliberate, unhurried and reasonably confident in what he's saying. He doesn't obviously hesitate or show any signs of distress or confusion. He seems to understand the interviewer's question clearly and he answers in a way that appears to be appropriate and acceptable to the interviewer.

Ilya doesn't speak French, and his technical ability in English might already be as good or better than Shane's in French, but he' doesn't have the poised practice with the media that Shane has (even in Russian, though to be fair, the only time we see him speak in Russian to the media, it's after a significant defeat). He doesn't really know how to present himself in the way that he wants to be presented.

Because Ilya is too envious of the traits he's able to perceive (Shane's confidence and poise), he assumes that Shane is better with the language than he actually is, and outright misses the microaggression that the interviewer sends Shane's way or Shane's subtle reaction to it.

Shane plays for Montreal. And in Montreal, hockey is practically a religion. He might not be recognizable in New York City (though Scott Hunter was recognized at a smoothie shop), but in Montreal, they'd know his face immediately. And we see him get recognized by those girls at the aquarium and that bartender who judges him for his ginger ale.

He also has a documentary about his cottage on Netflix.

There are also the brand deals and commercials. We've seen Ilya watch his Rolex commercial while exercising in Boston. His billowy-shirt-probably-cologne commercial aired in the Kingfisher bar in New York City. And we know there are others. Even if they don't know him by name, a reddit post that says "hey, I saw that Rolex guy making out with some dude on a rooftop" could easily end up exposing him.

And of course there's the Rose Landry of it all. She's implicitly around the same fame level as Jennifer Lawrence or Scarlet Johannsen, I think. She and Shane were definitely in tabloids and while I admit, I wouldn't recognize a celebrity's boyfriend on sight, a lot of people do. "Rose Landry's ex spotted in intimate embrace with unknown man" could easily end up on TMZ or Dlisted on a slower celeb news day.