on survival

I identify the most with the woman who has a green velvet ribbon around her neck and keeps being like "DONT untie my neck ribbon or something really bad will happen" and then her husband unties the ribbon and her head falls off. this is extremely real to me. spent my whole life like "please don't do this thing to me or really bad stuff will happen" and everyone around me being like "that sounds fake" and doing it anyway. and then my head fell off!

sorry for [remembering a tumblr post about expressing gratitude instead of apologising to make the interaction more positive for the other person] i mean thank you for having a boyfriend who was so easy to run over withmy car and reverse over three times maybe four

ilya’s most deeply held fantasy is like getting to do a only half-joking rap performance for shane and svetlana in his living room and shane’s most deeply held fantasy is ilya spitting in his mouth after calling him a whore

exiting a uquiz halfway through when it becomes clear the creator's narrow and immature world view and cultural knowledge leaves them totally unequipped to tell me which peanuts character i am with any degree of accuracy or insight

can i speak my truth. shane was completely justified in cooking eight burgers. like they are MALE HOCKEY PLAYERS who already put away a truly batshit quantity of food even before you add in the fact that they are also fucking 24/7, and we all watched ilya hoover up a heaped plate of spaghetti in like 30 seconds flat. that was not an unreasonable number of burgers. justice for my man

just married!!!

After 822 days, Gaza has been completely erased nothing remains. We are trapped here; no one can leave.Life in Gaza is being slaughtered slowly. We live like ghosts without shelter, without hope, without a future. Our children are being forcibly driven into loss, devoured by hunger, cold, and disease in deadly silence.

What is happening is a crime committed before the eyes of the world, and we are forgotten without a voice, without anyone to remember us.

We will not forgive anyone who witnesses this injustice and chooses silence instead of offering any help.

One thing I will never get tired of reading in fanfics is the ways in which the world discovers that Shane is a little sex freak.

It's so funny how everyone sees hollanov getting married and immediately jumps to "Wow Roz you got domesticated" as if Shane didn't use his gay virginity to do sex magic so powerful he soul-bonded Ilya's dick to his ass

And I couldn't help but wonder...

How much of Ilya being a rock for Shane after David caught saw them was him closing the loop on the burger conversation and helping Shane have the experience he himself will never have?

During the burger discussion, Ilya asks Shane if his parents knew. Shane immediately answers "About you? Of course not" and Ilya corrects him— "No, about you."

Ilya he knows how important Shane's family is to him. He also knows that pain of not being known by a parent (think back to the phone call after his father's funeral).

Part of him knows that Shane must be sad to keep part of himself locked away, to not be fully known by two of the people who matter the most to him. Add to that Shane's admission that part of the reason he hasn't said anything is because of Ilya—like he said in Tampa, it's not just that he's gay, it's that he loves likes his rival more than he should. For Shane, his family's openness would require full honesty and part of that honesty includes the role Ilya plays in his life. What this looks like is something he hadn't come around to quite yet... that is, until they have the promise and the reality of the cottage and the time, honesty, declarations, and a future it offers.

So when David shows up, Ilya guides Shane towards having the conversation he never got to have with his parents. He helps him be seen, something he was robbed of due to death and abuse. One, because he knows that's what Shane needs to truly be whole and two, because he is ready to be fully involved with him and all that comes with it. What a love.

girl dads hollanov and just like. playful physical contact however that may seem. thinking of that awesome scene of svetlana and ilya where he jokingly megaknights her and teases her and she's so giggly i love that scene it makes my heart so warm.

ilya tossing their girl a little too high in the air that he gets scolded by shane because "you are going to hurt her she will hit her head on the ceiling!!" obviously he's tossing their girl at a safe height but by god is it terrifying to watch happen in real time. ilya sticks his tongue out at the same time their daughter does, they both giggle together at the simultaneous action, and then he tosses her one more time for good measure. shane almost has a heart attack.

ilya and their daughter playing in the pool and it's just constant waves between the two as they race each other back and forth. shane sitting on the side and he can tell who's splashes onto the ground are whos depending on the size and sounds of the water hitting his feet. tells ilya to "i swear to god if you get me wet one more time" versus "you're doing a great job at torturing your father, [kid's name]."

ilya and their daughter fake boxing with each other and she throws him a jab to the side and he rolls over dramatically. "oh, shane, [kid's name] has wounded me so bad and i need big strong man to come and fix me up." and shane scoffs and kicks him even further as their girl just laughs and hides behind shane, endlessly amused.

[kid’s name] is obviously Irina.

I know my overthinking little Shane looked back at that night on the rooftop in vegas after learning about ilya’s family and was just like fuckkk I made a fucking suicide joke and Ilya was trying to tell me I go home in 3 days and my home life sucks and my mom is dead and every time I go home I wish she was there and something’s wrong with my dad and my brothers an asshole and I have all this fucking shit to worry about that’s why I’m sulking and I was just all pouty about not getting fucked and rubbing rookie of the year in his face shit :/

Yup. Shane our beloved overthinker absolutely stressed OUT over that.

And brought it up to Ilya, which made Ilya’s face get all soft. Because of course Shane remembered every detail of their interaction from 6 years before. Even though Shane was drunk at the time. And Ilya said, “You didn’t know. I forgive you.”

Or at least that’s how I like to imagine it going.

I have some Grigori Rozanov headcanons:

In the book, Alexei and Ilya are supposed to be full siblings, with Alexei four years older. So Alexei born in 1987, and Ilya in 1991. Alexei before the fall of Conmunism, Ilya when the Soviet Union was crumbling. He was canonically born June 1991, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist that same December. Grigori was in his mid-forties when he married Irina and had Alexei, either 50 or very nearly 50 when their younger child was born.

Anyway, what if Grigori was married before Irina, but his first wife couldn’t have children? An old-fashioned guy like Grigori wouldn’t have waited until he was in his mid forties to marry for the first time. Especially in a homophobic society where being a “confirmed bachelor” would be considered suspicious.

Grigori was clearly a high-ranking, influential guy. He would’ve needed a wife, if only to cook, clean and host parties for him. But there’s no mention of older half-siblings who also want a cut of Ilya’s hockey riches.

Maybe Grigori’s first wife was the daughter of an influential Party member and he couldn’t divorce her for being “barren”. His father in law would’ve torched his career in revenge. So he stayed with her until she died of natural causes. Or she finally got sick of Grigori and divorced him.

Then he remarried the much younger Irina, who could get pregnant, unlike his first wife. Which would explain why there’s no mention of a first wife and Ilya’s much older half siblings with their hands out like Alexei. Either she divorced Grigori or she died, and ceased to be relevant. Since she hadn’t fulfilled her wifely duty of giving him children.

Grigori remarried to Polina after Irina’s suicide. It’s never stated exactly how old Polina is, but probably closer to the age of her stepchildren than to the age of her husband.

Oh shit, what if the first Mrs Rozanova also died by suicide?

Might explain why Grigori was so adamant about covering up Irina’s true cause of death. If one of your wives dies by suicide, that’s just a tragedy. If both of them do, people would start speculating about what a shitty husband you must be.

It’s maybe an unnecessary headcanon. Grigori was the kind of guy who would want a good image as a family man, regardless of the reality. I could see him covering up Irina’s suicide even if that wasn’t how his first wife died. But it’s an extra layer of angst if she did.