💙 Unspoken, but Felt

Amy | 30s | She/Her | 📍Nova Scotia Chaos manager by day. Emotionally compromised writer by night. I write. Dog supervises. Rants, spirals & chaos ahead 💻🐾🌀 AO3: Amy04

[finelytaylored]

Q+ Magazine praises and celebrates Hudson Williams after his big win at the Canadian Screen Awards:

“Williams’ victory feels especially well deserved because Shane Hollander is not an easy character to portray. As we wrote in our review of the series, Williams delivers ‘a masterclass in micro-expressions and physical restraint.’ (…) Williams manages to communicate entire emotional arcs through a glance, a tense jaw, or a slight shift in posture. Every crack in Shane’s carefully constructed armor lands with devastating impact because of the work Williams puts in throughout the series.

Seeing that performance recognized on one of Canada’s biggest stages feels incredibly rewarding. Williams’ win is also historic in its own right. At just 25 years old, he became the youngest performer ever to win Best Lead Performer, Drama, at the Canadian Screen Awards, accomplishing the feat on his very first nomination.”

[sinmonger]

Hudson Williams | Best Lead Performer in a Drama Series

I didn't write a speech but I do have a little thank you list. Immediately to all the other nominees, it's just an honor to be nominated alongside you. I'm honored to be Canadian and this is fantastic.

[recenterhudmilan]

I can never take the "Hudson is a bad actor" claims seriously because the North remembers when ep 2 aired and he made us feel enough emotions to send Ilya boymoms into a spiral accross platforms spamming every posts vaguely disliking him after the events in Vegas with essays explaining his state of mind and the link to the bonus chapter that Rachel graciously provided for this exact purpose(something she never cared to do for Shane in TLG obviously).

To do what he did with the stilted dialogue they gave him is amazing I don't care.

[atomicrebelfire]

Hudson was right when he said his favorite scene was the Vegas bathroom scene because honestly? It’s still one of the best scenes in the show for me.

Episode 5 was incredible and my absolute fav, but there’s something about that episode 2 scene that hits differently. You feel every emotion Shane is trying to show and suppress so viscerally.

[wtf-is-hockey]

but Reid wrote an entire book not developing Shane into somebody who would choose to come out to his team, and then made him come out to his team. It's just bad writing. //

Yes this and the comment about Russia that followed (her ignoring it completely in TLG). IMO how she wrote Ilya wanting to come out so bad doesn't make sense in the same way Shane coming out to his team doesn't make sense. Not because i don't think Ilya doesn't want to come out just that I don't think he'd forget about the Russia ramification of it all. From him not wanting to even speak to Shane in Sochi, to him bringing up how being queer is dangerous in Russia to Shane in Tampa hotel, to him initiating the conversation about not wanting a Russian passport anymore and his plan to get another citizenship still included marrying a woman because he knew being out would not be safe even then if he the citizenship wasn't guaranteed. All of that, it then doesn't make sense that none of it ever comes back up in TLG.

For so much of TLG i felt like i was reading about two completely different characters. Like who are these people and where is Ilya and Shane ??

Mmhmm. I've talked about this exact thing many times before but it bears repeating all the same. It is utterly nonsensical to go from making Ilya unable to come out in HR because of Russia, to making Ilya desperate to come out in tlg. Reid does more than just gloss over Russia. She ignores it all together. I think she thinks she handled the Russian plot point when she snapped her fingers and made Ilya decide he never wanted to go back to Russia anyway, but there are so many other factors to consider beyond Ilya's personal desire or lack thereof to go back to Russia and Reid doesn't seem to understand that, never mind that Ilya would realistically have more complicated feelings about never being able to return to his home country again.

Tlg should have been about them both wishing they could come out and struggling because neither of them were able to. But Reid would have never written this story because she doesn't understand the closet is a necessary measure queer people take to survive and she is unwilling to ever depict straight society as queer people's primary conflict. So she wrote another story in which queer people are against each other and the primary conflict is the closet.

[gettingheated94]

It’s because The Long Game is just weakly rehashing Game Changers.

Couple gets together with the understanding that coming out is an after retirement plan and both accepting that.

Then Kip/ Ilya decide they don’t really want to wait but never tell Scott/ Shane thus creating confusion and resentment and leading to Scott/ Shane having to make a big grand gesture apology for not realizing something that was being actively hidden from them.

They even have the same big turning point of Kip/ Ilya springing the idea of going to a party together on Scott/Shane with little to no warning. Which causes them to panic and be confused because they thought the two of them were on the same page about this and it turns into a fight where Scott/ Shane are accused of not being as committed to the relationship and selfishly making Kip/ Ilya’s life miserable.

Scott/ Shane also both have everything going well (on the surface) while Kip/ Ilya’s lives are kind of a mess for most of the book.

Kip/Ilya are both isolated from their friends/ team because they can’t possibly join them to do anything without spilling the beans.

And I’m sure there’s more similarities.

She just reused the GC plot and either was too lazy or didn’t have time to adjust the plot to include the aspects of Shane and Ilya’s relationship (notably Russia) that were such a big deal in HR.

Possibly throws Shane coming out to his team into the story in an attempt to create a difference between the stories but then fails to devote the attention to make it mean anything.

Just unbelievably lazy writing in my opinion.

[hudsonsolo]

Happy Birthday Shane!! 🎂🏒🎈(art by orgo_hr)

[louferrignojrofficial]

this is the funniest fucking thing i’ve ever read. he finally said the quiet part out loud, he doesn’t like all of his scenes being about someone else.

[atomicrebelfire]

i feel so validated 😭

“this doesn’t mean all my scenes are gonna be just about this, right?” EXACTLY. Lmao.

another season of buck reevaluating his life 569872th times loading. lol shut it down.

[bitching-barista]

I think the excessive criticism about Hudson’s makeup is literally just misogyny and homophobia. People get hyper critical every time he does something gender nonconforming or remotely queer. They’ll make up a bunch of reasons “why” to excuse themselves but it all goes down to “just a feeling” or “just their opinion.” The basic fact is you saw a masculine man wearing bold and colorful makeup proudly and now you’re having a fit. ​If a femme queer person or a woman wore that look you would be calling it a slay. You wouldn’t be posting about it so much if you weren’t fixating on it from a place of hate. You’d go “oh not for me” and move on if it was purely just that you didn’t like how it was done. He looked incredible and a hell of a lot better than at least 90% of the drab boring millennial gray basics that attended that gala. He literally looked like a rockstar and Aika delivered once again, sorry your mind is too closed to handle it that sounds sad

[intergalacticmca]

It kind of irritates me that people dog on Shane for suggesting Ilya leave Boston for Ottawa when Ilya is the one who said he didn’t want to re-sign with Boston and that he wanted to play for a Canadian team. Saying Shane came up with the idea and that the idea removes any sacrifice he could potentially have to make completely ignores the fact that Ilya is the one who brought up leaving his cup winning team in the first place. Shane chose Ottawa because it makes the most sense in terms of being a Canadian team (which is what Ilya was already thinking of), “desperately needs a star centre”, and is the closest Canadian team that’s also in reasonable proximity to Montreal. Moving to a team in the west isn’t going to help anything because they’ll still be extremely far away. Toronto is even further from Montreal than Boston is.

Shane also wasn’t nearing the end of his contract with the Metros yet. Ilya was heading into free agency. Shane can’t move teams whereas Ilya can literally go wherever he wants if there’s enough cap space.

Shane made a suggestion that sounded like the only good option at the time and it ended up facing complications, because at the end of the day their situation still fucking sucks. They still barely see each other and the suffocation of the closet and the toll of hiding their relationship, combined with Ilya’s team having a bad season, begins to take its toll on Ilya’s mental health. The entire point is they thought they’d be able to do the hiding thing until they retired and their journey throughout the story is realizing it isn’t sustainable and it’s causing them both to suffer.

Ilya suggested leaving Boston and moving to a Canadian team. Ilya was willing to leave everything behind for Shane and didn’t have the foresight to understand the problems that might cause him. I don’t think Shane was under the illusion that Ilya moving to Ottawa was the perfect solution, but the point is there was no perfect solution and that was really the only one that made sense at the time. The idea that Shane selfishly suggested Ottawa so as to avoid not disrupting his own life just isn’t accurate when the entire concept of Ilya leaving Boston was Ilya’s idea in the first place.

I understand a lot of people don’t like the moving to Ottawa plot and I think that’s valid, but that’s not what this post is about. My point is that it’s unfair to call Shane selfish and stupid for his Ottawa plan when he genuinely was trying to make something work. I really don’t like trying to make Shane more of the bad guy in this situation when, at the end of the day, it’s their situation that sucks.

Two male hockey players in a homophobic league who spend most of the year travelling nearly every day of the week and training the rest of it, who only get summers off, trying to make a relationship work. That’s the real torture nexus. Ilya’s team playing like shit just makes it worse.

[robbuckys]

I will give it to Tim though, he knows his audience... Made Connor and Kameron bad parents and be nasty towards Buck so no one cares that he just killed a woman and a MOC to give a kid to his white bio dad who will love him better. Literally no one cares about the optics of this storyline (not that many truly did before) now that Buck is seen as the better option for the kid. Buddie's will get scenes of them together again next season and Bucktommy's will fantasize about Tommy raising the kid with him and the show will go on as usual because no one actually sticks to their words, which is why this stuff will continue because Tim knows no one will actually stop watching no matter what he writes. I can't completely be mad at a showrunner that knows his audience will accept anything as long as he occasionally feeds them something good. I want to stick around for the fandom, but this storyline will and already is seeping into every headcanon and fic now and I want nothing to do with this kid stuff, so unfortunately I think I'm gonna have to lose all of it soon which just really sucks for me lol

Preach!

Optics are terrible, I'm out

[ivviannaa]

you know how hockey players do that thing where they automatically hug someone from the other team so that nobody else jumps in when there's a fight?

i like to imagine montreal vs. ottawa game days post-the long game consist of hayden and shane very solemnly doing that every two minutes

[atomicrebelfire]

Some people in this cast/crew seriously need diversity and sensitivity training before doing more press.

The pattern of microaggressions isn’t subtle anymore, and it’s getting uncomfortable to watch.

It’s not about one awkward comment…..it’s the repeated tone, the way certain dynamics keep showing up.

[atomicrebelfire]

I guess… at this point it’s not just diversity and sensitivity training.

It should include regular media training, social media awareness, and a basic understanding of how bias shows up in who gets recognised and who doesn’t.

It’s honestly surprising that the corporate L&D teams aren’t more on top of this. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[atomicrebelfire]

Some people in this cast/crew seriously need diversity and sensitivity training before doing more press.

The pattern of microaggressions isn’t subtle anymore, and it’s getting uncomfortable to watch.

It’s not about one awkward comment…..it’s the repeated tone, the way certain dynamics keep showing up.

[atomicrebelfire]

soooo i was rewatching ep 4… yeah yeah i know, again 🙄 but i wanted to look into the second feist song used in the show

so. RESEARCH!!!

this whole time i thought this was a straight shot through the shower glass

but no — we’re watching it through the mirror above the sink

the faucet + counter in the foreground are real everything else is reflection

and now that i see it, i literally can’t unsee it and feel a little stupid for not clocking it earlier 😭

and honestly… was that intentional?

because at this point in the story, they’re still just “fuck buddies” their feelings are hidden — even from themselves they haven’t even named what this is yet

they’re not something we’re “allowed” to witness directly so the camera doesn’t let us be in that space with them

it keeps us outside of it watching indirectly through a reflection

like we’re not supposed to be there like we’re intruding on something private

or…

It’s just a sexier shot this way 😌 as we have seen them directly in earlier shots....

What do you guys think?

[atomicrebelfire]

Fun fact: Sidney Crosby is a two-time Emmy Award winner…

which means Shane Hollander absolutely has one for that documentary and you can’t convince me otherwise. this is canon to me.

[penandinkprincess]

laughing about the idea of ilya doing one of those puppy buzzfeed interviews and then anya sniffing him when he gets home and feeling SO betrayed

and shane meanwhile is having a great time pressing the accelerator on this guilt trip

cuddling anya and just, "i know, huh? papa left and played with WHO KNOWS HOW MANY other dogs, and the whole time you were here missing him"

ilya, who is lowkey devastated: "hollander, this is not a joke."

"no, it isn't, huh, anya? you're so, so sad now."

"...hollander PLEASE. anya, i am sorry-"

"it seems like he's saying something, but we can't hear cheaters, can we, anya?"

"HOLLANDER"

[atomicrebelfire]

made a small discord server for hud/con fans

it’s a chill space to talk about them, share fics, discuss the show, and just hang out

if that sounds like something you’d like, feel free to dm me for the invite 💛

[chestharrington]

PSA: For fan works, reblog and like from OP

Tumblr is rolling out a new reblog/notes system that completely disregards creators. In their new system, they're taking a twitter-style approach where reblogs will have their own notes that DO NOT contribute to the original post's notes.

Because of this, creators will no longer be able to see an accurate display of likes/reblogs/etc. This is completely altering the way feedback and responses to works are going to be received on this website.

If you come across a fan work that you enjoy, please take the extra step to go to OPs original post, and leave your comment/like/reblog there. Or go one step further and send an ask to OP directly to tell them what you liked!

I really hope Tumblr staff reverses course and reverts to the original reblog system for the sake of the large base of creators who use this site to share their works, but until then, please be considerate and make sure the creators here see/feel the love.