It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me.

So, guess what fandom completely took over my brain? Well, looks like I'm in good company, judging from the honestly frightening number of stories that gets posted to the Ao3 each day. I've been trawling the tag whenever I have a bit of time, like the good obsessive fangirl that I am, and I'll share my findings with you. :D Also, a heads-up, I'm going to be locking my rec-cember posts tomorrow or the day after. I don't like to have a lot of public posts on this journal.

All stories are Shane/Ilya, even when the story doesn't focus on the relationship. As usual, I live for AUs. Assume spoilers for The Long Game for all of these, I've read the books a couple of times but not recently so I can't quite keep the timeline straight in my head.

Gen

love takes miles 7K words, mixed media. Ten years of Hollanov as seen through fandom. This is clever and so much fun!

how do you feel? 10 K. * Shane Hollander, interviewee, throughout the years.* Fantastic Shane character study.

Missing Scenes

wanna get stuck in your head . 31 K. He only realizes he’s doing it when it’s too late to stop. He’s standing in the drink aisle of the grocery store, checking the expiration dates on the cans of Coke, mentally cross-checking them with Boston’s away game schedule, and the reality hits him like someone shook one of those cans and popped it open. A snap. A fizz. A mess. Shane is making space for Ilya. A series of missing scenes expanding on the episodes/books, lovely Shane exploration.

Ep 2 The Wrong Conclusion. Hayden & Shane. 505 words. “Um,” Hayden started, and his whole face was flushed red. Shane couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Hayden look so flustered. “Lily sent you a dick pic.” I have a soft spot for Hayden Pike. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but a good friend.

Ep 3

u might want to get tested . Explicit. 5.3K words. Lily: U might want to get tested Jane: Hilarious. Fuck you. Fantastic voices. Perfectly in character. And hilarious. I actually LOLed a few times while reading.

Ep 4

Too Nice. Explicit. 3.3 k. Hollander's parents weren't mean enough to him, Ilya decides. He's an only child, too — that has to have played a part. Almost certainly, nobody ever sat backwards on Hollander's chest and farted into his mouth while he tried to get away. Nobody ever poked his lower lip when he was sad and said a bird will come poop on this if you don't put it away. And definitely, nobody ever said my son can be lazy, right in front of his face, right in front of the owner of the new team that picked him first. This is hot, but what I like the most is Ilya's POV on Shane.

Ep 5

measure of a man Shane&Rose. 1.2k. “Nine.” Her voice is flat with disbelief. “Rose.” He drags a hand over his face.“Nine. Like—inches? No metric nonsense? God, I kind of wish it was metric nonsense. That can’t be right.” I love Rose teasing Shane but also helping him out. Such great banter and characterisation.

Ep 6

Keep Pace. I've seen quite a fair bit of fic about Yuna Hollnader, this is the only one I found focussing on David. Absolutely perfect, feels straight out of canon.

Future fic and/or stories set after The Long Game (aka book 2)

Tad Too Tight . 803 words. Being married on the same team can be proven difficult. Especially for rookies that don’t know the extent.

Dig Two Graves 28 K. The Montreal Voyageurs won't stop slinging mud at Shane in the press, so Shane and Ilya decide to get revenge the best way they know how. This is extremely angsty, be warned. Mind the tags!

two-man advantage. 4.7K. Two-Man Advantage: At Home with Hockey’s Biggest Power Couple, by Matthew Cooper. Their on-ice rivalry turned into the NHL’s most unexpected love story. Now, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov say they have no plans to slow down. The GQ profile fic. I love external POvs in the form of a magazine article.

AUs

I'm Reading Your Lips (You're Speaking My Language) . 30 K. Explicit. Despite an inauspicious start, when Russia’s Ilya Rozanov learns that Canada’s Shane Hollander is fluent in Russian at their first World Junior Championships tournament, it changes everything and sets them on a different course. Instead of being branded as rivals from the very beginning, Ilya and Shane start off as friends. And, after all, a little friendly rivalry never hurt anyone, did it? I like how having Shane a heritage Russian speaker changes the dynamic between our guys.

WIPS

I dont' usually rec unfinished stories but these are so good, I'm keeping all my fingers crossed for them to be actually finished!

Concussion Protocol AU. Instead of Shane, it is Ilya who suffers a concussion during the Boston-Montreal game in April 2017. This is a total angst-fest! I love how the author is exploring properly in jury recovery and what looking after someone with that sort of problem entails. And the psychological repercussions for all involved.

Half Agony, Half Hope by CorvidCordelia 26K so far. Au. Three years after Shane broke it off (not that there was anything to break off), he gets a concussion and the Metros bring in Ilya to fill in for him. A breakup and makeup fic inspired by Jane Austen's Persuasion. I live for update notifs for this fic! It's that good.

Home Ice Advantage .Shane gets traded to Boston AU.

The Pitt

Since one of the WIPs I found only because I recognised the author's name from *the Pitt, I give you their Kingdon fic: Frank Langdon and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by CorvidCordelia. Groundhog Day AU. A fannish classic, and when it's done well like in this case it is super-satisfying!

The Old Guard is a superhero movie about a bunch of inexplicably immortal mercenearies. >Superheroes are totally not my thing, I watched this movie because it had one of my Italian actor crushes, Luca Marinelli. Then I checked out the fic mostly only because sixthlight was writing in this fandom. See, I'm an extremely loyal reader. If I like an author I will try and read any stories they publish, no matter the fandom. I knew I was going to like whatever sixthlight was going to dish out. I was right. Also, Luca Marinelli played a medieval nobleman from my own hometown!And he was half of a canonical gay couple.

Predictably, my favourite stories are AU of the no-superhero-power kind. They can be read with little to no knowledge of canon and can be enjoyed as the tropetastic romance they are.

marriage of (in)convenience. Modern Royalty AU. In which my hometown is a small principality, Ruritania-style. Lolol. To be fair, Joe did know there were some things Nicky wasn’t quite telling him. But it didn’t matter to him who Nicky’s ancestors had been. What mattered was Nicky, who was kind, and thoughtful, and relentlessly committed to doing the right thing, including his share of the dishes. Really, what else did you need to know that someone was a keeper? I don't know why I have such a soft spot for modern monarchy romance but I just do. I'm very sad I can no longer link to the best of the lot, the X-Men royalty AU by Yahtzee (it's been published as proper romance! I bought it!).

Diplomatic Complications.A classic arranged marriage trope, but Yusuf is the nervous groom who gets shipped off to a strange country.

In The Heat of The Moment. This is history-flavoured fantasy and all names of historical locations should not be taken as referring to the serious historical nations/cities but, uh, places vaguely like them and vaguely located the same in relation to each other but with (checks notes) complete cross-faith acceptance of gay marriage, contact with the New World, and definitely no Crusades. We're all here for the arranged marriage romcom and that's just how it has to be. I also have, quite evidently, a thing for arranged marriage. :D This awesome story also comes as a podfic, by greedy_dancer.

The Pitt

except for breath, except for everything by sawdustdiamonds Pittsburgh Doctor Sentenced to Five Years in Drug Diversion and Theft Case. At 6:30 PM on a July evening, everyone in the city knew about Dr. Frank Langdon. This a WIP but it's one of the most powerful pieces of fiction I've ever read, It's emotionally devastating, brace yourselves. The best kind of what if/AU, the one which teaches you something about the fuckedupness of our world, in this instance the prison system in the US (the one in my country is equally inhumane).