to the victor, the spoils

formerly blaseball, now heated rivalry (main: bobby-hockey) robbie - any pronouns - chicago firefighters ao3

[baby-triumphant]

hello!

i just realized i have no introduction here. hi, welcome in, feel free to take your shoes off. i'm robbie, mixed asian-american, any pronouns OK, babytriumphant on ao3; this is a sideblog, i follow and like from @bobby-hockey, where you can find misc real life sports / writing stuff.

if you were here for the blaseball era you are a real one. now this blog will mostly have heated rivalry things.

my fics:

party rockers series

party rockers: one-shot, 3k. in the summer of 2018 ilya's rookies red and blue go to a pride parade and give ilya a stress headache. hotel motel holiday inn: longfic, incomplete, ~3k chapters updating wednesdays. ilya makes the choice to re-sign in boston instead of throwing his career away in ottawa. more introspective/slow burn character study than anything, about intent, impact, and some really goofy young players.

my heated rivalry tags:

robbie.speaks - og posts / significant contributions from me

party rockers - party rockers.

heated rivalry analysis - critical analysis of the original work

meta notes - thoughts on the broader world of heated rivalry, specifically as it relates to real-life hockey

character notes - things that are real to me

canon notes - true things about canon for my reference

heated rivalry screenshots, art - self-explanatory

misc - misc.

feel free to throw me an ask or message whenever! i will try to respond promptly but i refuse to make promises.

[baby-triumphant]

i always see paul kariya as the closest comp for shane, wasian and extremely skilled but targeted and considered weak by other players, media and fans throughout his career

canonically shane Will Not play wing lol but sure i see where you're coming from.

really i'm not the best person to ask about this because i was ten whole years old when he retired and ten year old me didn't even know what hockey was. all of my specific hockey player knowledge is limited to active players in the nhl circa 2018-present.

if we're talking about the authorial intent behind game changers broadly speaking though i sincerely doubt rachel reid was thinking of a specific wasian player when she made shane since 1) i think she's said she based him on sidney crosby and 2) i doubt she would have given it an iota of thought anyway since textually shane's asianness is little more than set dressing for him being a gay asian bottom stereotype. (also until proven otherwise i doubt she knows a single thing about any western conference player, her anti-western conference complex is that obvious to me.)

not sure how to interpret this ask tbh. was this supposed to be a conversation starter? something else?

[gaynehollander]

Ilya sends literally all his clothes out to be cleaned and has never used a washing machine in his life

Shane washes his everyday and gym clothes + underwear at home but he only knows one setting on his washing machine and uses it for everything

[teddywesworl]

I know you're not a heated rivalry blog so no worries if you don't wanna talk about it, but something I've seen people talk about wrt Shane being iced out of the team is that it'd actually be BECAUSE of the fact that the Canadiens carry more meaning than one player himself. I guess the theory is that because Shane made himself a story and stand out/bigger than the team identity, he had to go. Personally I disagree with this theory because I think his personal story and life being given precedence over what he did for the team's legacy itself with the cups would be worse, but I'd love your thoughts

i did watch the show, because it would be insane of me not to watch the hockey show made by certified guy who went to my high school jacob tierney, but tbh the fanbase was designed in a lab to get on my nerves, so i mostly stay away.

short answer: boooooo tomato tomato tomato that's mtl slander get out of my house

long involved navel gazing answer: first of all that absolutely stinks of people who want the storyline to be justified (for whatever reason they might want that) so they assume the conclusion and work backwards.

so obviously the closest real life comparison we have to shane's position is pk subban, who, being Black, was the constant scapegoat in certain elements of the press and the fanbase, but who (despite that attempted scapegoating) was and is utterly beloved by The City at large. like this dude was the non stop target of press guys like jack todd who still want every hockey player to be a cardboard cutout in public (lest they be accused of having "character issues"), but he was larger than life anyway, thrived in the spotlight, and regularly had his name chanted by the bell centre faithful. he "made himself a story" constantly, because he was electric and loud and expressive. like, the pk trade to nashville is probably what rachel was mad about when she wrote Villainous Montreal into the long game, let's be real. i personally think pk's been spending too much time being wealthy in the united states lately, and he's had some dumb takes about e.g. wayne gretzky's politics that i wish he hadn't said out loud in public, but all that aside, i am 100% confident that if he went to the habs game tomorrow and his face appeared on the jumbotron for 1.4 seconds, the whole crowd would stand up and delay the game for several minutes.

pk subban, for all his and (and carey price's) brilliance, won zero stanley cups.

and somebody wants to tell me that a three-time cup winning captain, a franchise hero, a man whose place in the rafters would be secured before the age of 27, could be dropped from the montreal roster--for reasons unrelated to hockey, mind you--without the city going so berserk that the book would have to change genres??

habs who win are canonized. we all know this. and the montreal canadiens' history being so intertwined with that of a literal political and cultural revolution gives us, frankly, an outsized interest in underdogs. we fucking love an underdog, man, we love fighting the english, we love overthrowing the catholic church. i am completely convinced that a three-time cup-winning habs captain getting outed against his will would activate a level of montreal-ness about said captain never before seen in the modern era. responding to the injustice of him being outed would be folded right into the franchise's whole identity instantly and without hesitation. a gm who traded him after that would be run out of town, pelted with rotting produce.

and the fact that none of these repercussions are handled in the books just tells me that rachel fully does not understand what the relationship between montreal and its hockey players actually is. obviously, randoms reading the books/watching the show can say whatever they want to justify the storyline, that's their right. but im gonna hate it and make fun of it because mfs are talking shit about my city.

[creamsiclemelt]

"responding to the injustice of him being outed would be folded right into the franchise's whole identity instantly and without hesitation" this is absolutely it. it'd be folded into mythology. the captain who was outed against his will, the hero who brought the cup home three times who was made a target—god can you guys even imagine what would happen when they realized the commissioner was threatening him? montreal fans are like, practically desperate for a reason to get mad at the league and this would be the perfect time, even beyond the shane of it all

[ahotknife]

— MOLLY BRODAK

[parcai]

anyway sometimes i think abt how yes ilya left his mother's grave behind, & every other piece of her aside from the necklace, but when he was outed he was forced to leave behind everything else too. the first hockey stick he ever played with that he'll never be able to give his kids. all/any childhood photos that the hollanders might've wanted to see or frame or use in a fucking anniversary slideshow for god's sake. baby blankets & toddler skates & anything else he might've touched or been. his mother's recipes or clothes she knit for him, his first jersey, baby teeth, a strand of lighter near white blond baby hair from a first haircut. ilya was not born until age 17 to these people & now he's frozen this way.

one can ofc hope that maybe svetlana can go & bring some things back, but andrei might've burned it all, thrown it all out, lost it, or just flat out refuse, out of jealousy or petty rage idk. more than that, he will lose parts of himself purely to time without a photo or a visit or a way to remember it. he'll forget the exact route he used to walk from practice, the rink he used to practice at as a kid, the bakery down the street he & his mom would visit, the smell of his favorite meal cooking in the kitchen, or her shower soap, or the way her fingers felt against his forehead when he was sick (frail? skinny? warm? strong? there's no way to know). he forgets the exact shade of irina's hair & eyes & if in fact it's the same precise color as his or if that's just his memory trying to comfort him, soothe some jagged grief deep within him. moscow slang & the way the russian language changes over the decades. even just the accent, fading over the years.

ilya talks abt how he was born again, awakened, turned alive the second he met shane, had his breath stolen by polite nervous canadian chatter & stunning freckles, but i don't think we consider enough that to be born again you have to die first. mourning. god help him

[jockadjacent]

my problem is that i would gladly sacrifice joy and whimsy for something that feels true

[grabmyboner]

i like to think ilya rozanov would be 50 cent level of hater rage baiter to everyone he despises yknow what i mean

[grabmyboner]

here are some 50 cent tweets i believe ilya could have tweeted

[helenvaughans]

[itsmistybitch-deactivated202605]

These posts are sisters

[lierdumoa]

[parkchanwoohoo]

[thatnordicguy]

[cloudabserk]

based on this excellent post

[akashicrecord]

Summer's biggest blockbuster is Two Guys Fucking at 7/11

[bedlund]

so basically i think it would be really juicy if shane telling ilya to go to therapy had the added air of superiority because shane IS in talk therapy and he thinks he’s sooo good at it. meanwhile his psychologist just kind of sucks and they are doing this at each other for an hour every week

[bedlund]

i think shane treats having a psychologist like having a dietitian and a physio. it’s just another way to reach peak performance. Mind you his therapist doesn’t even know he’s gay

[notahungrywish]

This is chewyyyyy. Ilya is going through foundation-shattering deeply painful trauma therapy with a solid hour of bone deep sobbing and serious homework each week.

Shane is doing once a month check-ins where he talks about how sometimes the pressure to win affects his performance on the ice, and his therapist suggests a positive visualization exercise he already does and he says “thanks, good idea! :)” every time.

And then he looks at him with an air of superiority like “I don’t know Ilya are you sure you’re trying hard? I never want to skip therapy or feel worse afterwards. Have you tried a positive visualization exercise?”

And Ilya doesn’t kill hill him somehow.

[mycupoverfloweth]

[obligatedart]

All good things come in pairs

Ilya and Shane, invited by Nicolai Howalt’s 141 Boxers

[409-conflict]

I cannot stop thinking about what a fucking year Ilya had in 2014

Putin warns gay people not to spread propaganda during Sochi Olympics

Every Western media outlet wants a sound bite from Ilya, a Russian superstar who’s lived in the West for five years, regarding the gay propaganda laws

Ilya has to thread the needle of neither denouncing or promoting Russia’s stance

Ilya leads the National Hockey Team to a demoralising crash out

The prettiest man in the world makes the unbelievably stupid decision that now is a good time and place to talk to each other in public for the first time ever

He is upbraided by his Papa

Sveta completely misreads what he needs, and he can’t even be mad about it because at least she’s trying

The Bolotnaya Square protesters are convicted

Russia moves troops into Crimea

He keeps frantically googling pictures of Shane in the middle of the night

Russian opposition leaders are detained

G8 suspends Russian membership

Boston makes the playoffs

The Russian government enacts laws tightening control of dissemination of information, categorising bloggers alongside journalists

The Donetsk and Luhansk referenda, unrecognised by the international community

Boston wins the Stanley Cup

Has panic attack in a bathroom, is immediately accused of being an asshole for arriving on time

Successfully convinces himself he’s capable of having sex with Shane without feelings, definitely doesn’t cry once he’s alone

Super super fun happy times summer with his ailing father

MH17 shot down by Russian-made missile

Russia hits back at sanctions by banning food imports, sends food prices soaring

Oil prices crash, halving Russia’s national budget

Foreign ownership in Russia media is capped

Has Totally No Strings No Feelings secret sex with Shane, everything is Chill

Russian financial crisis hits, prices of food up 40 to 50%, some KHL teams can’t even pay their players

And all throughout this, every time he opens Facebook he’s tagged in yet another hundred fucking ALS ice bucket challenges

[abyssaldyke]

It's spring now which means the kids in my city have started drawing hopscotches on the sidewalk and as a rule I do every hopscotch I see because 1. Use it or lose it (ability to scotch) and 2. If a child got down on the hardscrabble streets of Boston Massachusetts to draw a scotch the least I can do is use it, but in doing the hopscotches, I've learned that about 50% of them are the typical 8-10 step scotch and the other 50% are. Somewhat avant-garde. And of course I'm not vetting the entire scotch before I start it so sometimes it's like haha 8 steps woo! Childlike whimsy! And sometimes they're 20 steps or 30 or they've got a section with three squares instead of two where you have to do a little Charleston to step on all three, or, memorably, FORTY one foot squares. A full BLOCK of jumping on one foot but I'm no quitter so once I've started Jigsaw Junior's fuckin hopscotch gauntlet I'm there til the end just a daily pot smoker in her thirties jumping kasa-obake style through an affluent suburb while some little proto-kennedy watches from his bedroom window rubbing his sadistic little third grade hands together and cackling. It's amazing. I love spring.