"Don't get attached to Freddie's character because they're probably gonna die" I assure you whatever Will Campos inflicts upon his character will be a fate worse than death.
from a doctor to the doctor, here’s my concepts for a fourteenth doctor as played by alexander siddig! i’m sure the chances of him being cast are slim, but i figured i put this out into the universe before we actually get an announcement
“I’m not my father,” Alfred smiles disarmingly. As though it were a fundamental, undisputed truth of the universe. “My old man would rather be shot than let go of his empire, sure. He’d like to think the Atlantic Charter applies only to Europe, not his colonies.” A flash of an almost impish smile, breaking through. “But as you surely know, I’m not the most filial son. And right now, it’s me who keeps the mighty British Empire's head above the water. I can just as easily let go. And he knows it.”
“You, challenging your father over his empire?” Yao wonders if the irony could come any thicker. “You’ll forgive me if I find that hard to believe. At least, when it comes to my part of the world.”
"Oh, but I will," Alfred insists. His smile never wavers, bright and gregarious and shark-like. "If that old fool stands in the way of my vision. In the way of progress."
china and america, circa 1942. (ft. nascent pax americana)
Broadly, I don't think there is much disagreement over what is canon and what isn't in the discourse regarding the ending of The Long Game. I think people are just reacting to the story differently. Some people are fine with the ending and some people aren't. What I think is causing this specific discourse tension is that romance genre conventions are being given more scrutiny than maybe they had previously in popular forums. Given that the genre is as popular as it is and consistently traffics in certain conservative ideals (sometimes intentionally, sometimes as a matter of genre form), I think it's fair to consider it with that heightened scrutiny.
Why bring up the paycut if we are not meant to infer he would be taking a paycut? Why bring up him "coming for the C" or being used to standing with the Captains/Alternates if we are not meant to understand the loss of this position as a loss? One of these things was the reason why Ilya signed with Ottawa instead of Montreal:
Shane signing with Ottawa at the end of The Long Game is a situation in which he explicitly gives a couple things up (pay and his leadership position) in favor of playing with his husband and playing on a team he, it's implied, could feel good representing:
Shane will continue to be a great hockey player, Shane will have a great career, Shane will be with his husband, Shane is rescued/escapes from the "vicious" Montreal media, Shane and Ilya will be in the Hall of Fame, Shane and Ilya win at hockey and at love, Shane will still be payed millions of dollars to play a game, Shane will be fine.
The issue that a lot of fans are running up against, I think, is not buying into the convention. Possibly due to not buying into the romance logic or not being convinced by the storytelling within the convention to begin with: this does not read as the happiest ending to some readers. Saying: "he's happy, he chose it," is not a sufficient answer to: "why is this how the story resolves, with the problems that it set up from the start?" It's an answer to a "what happens", not "why" or "why should a reader find this persuasive."
As there was no suggestion in Heated Rivalry that Ottawa was a poor team and that Ilya would be sacrificing wins for signing with them in exchange for being closer to Shane and getting started on achieving a citizenship to ensure his safety from the Russian government, we can understand that Reid's decision to write Ottawa as a team perhaps at the start of a few rebuild years as part of the structure of the romance story she intended. In a very pared down summary: at the beginning of the story, Ilya makes a sacrifice for love; at the end, Shane makes a sacrifice for love. This is a typical romance narrative: equivalent, if not exactly similar, sacrifices being made for the sake of the relationship.
The tension comes from looking at these sacrifices in greater detail and how both characters are positioned in the resolution of this story. Ilya chooses to go to Ottawa as a free agent; Shane chooses to go to Ottawa after a depth of rejection he finds unacceptable (Shane trips in a game against his husband and apparently Montreal media is "vicious" about it and his team is not standing behind him). These are not the same choice. One can argue that Ilya's "choice" was to sacrifice years of his career to play for a rebuild team. Going from Heated Rivalry to The Long Game, I think it's not impossible that this was the point of making Ottawa a rebuild team to begin with, to even out the positions of these two competitive characters. But it's still true that in the story, as it's written, Shane does not choose to leave his team with the same degree of choice as Ilya. Ilya was not reacting to viciousness or a team turned against him or a mistake on ice that was meant to highlight how bad his environment was. Narratively, the trip was there to force Shane's hand to reveal to him what the "right" choice was and what his heart really wanted. It's romantic.
The objection to this ending is not "Shane isn't happy with this happy ending," but rather "This happy ending is not convincing." The romantic ending is not convincing enough for some in the setting of the story which includes athletic competition and being very publicly available, being famous, where the degree of realism for either of these aspects of the romantic setting shifts with the needs of the romantic plot. Shane and Ilya have to hide their feelings from themselves and others: this is the romantic plot tension. Why do they have to hide? Because they are hockey players. The setting is homophobic and they are famous and open to a lot of public judgment. In Heated Rivalry, Ilya is also concerned about the fact that his identity or "promoting" his identity is criminalized: existing as a famous Russian queer hockey player is dangerous. The resolution to this, in Reid's first story about them, is that they undercut their public perceptions, allow themselves to become publicly perceived as friends, and move to a closer geographic distance in order to see each other more often. They are also outed to Shane's parents but they are welcoming so this is also part of the resolution. This is a convincing happy ending to many who find The Long Game unconvincing because it is carving out a way forward with the constraints of their environment that are consistently felt and understood by the reader. They can't come out publicly; neither want to sacrifice their careers; Ilya gets to be a star center and be paid his worth; they get to be closer together than they have been; Ilya gets a chance at the legal protection of his partner's government body. The burden of the relationship is relatively equal in the ending--the unequal aspect being the reference to the reality of an authoritarian government presenting a issue to the characters that is fundamentally intractable towards any design of their relationship "being public."
The Long Game is unconvincing because one aspect that was important in Heated Rivalry is handwaved (I suspect Reid regretted mentioning the Russia-problem in HR because, as I said, it's intractable: realistically speaking, Ilya as a publicly out famous Russian hockey player would be in danger his entire life no matter where he lived--and Shane and Svetlana probably in connection with him) and the burden of the secrecy becomes something to fully solve rather than something to figure out how to endure until it's safe. The logic of the romance overrides the logic of the setting: things that were not truly solvable at the end of HR are solved by being outed, by a declaration of love, by a quick rescue from a bad place (Montreal), and by both persons in the story sacrificing for love. It's unconvincing as well because Shane chooses to go to Ottawa explicitly because he does not want to represent a Montreal that is reacting badly to a mistake on ice--that is, his choice to leave was forced.
Why is Russia not a problem anymore? Why is taking a pay cut not a bar to signing with a partner's team? Why did Shane have to make a mistake that people are being "vicious" about in order to move him to sign with Ottawa? Why is Shane wanting a leadership role a source of humor (Could she not have written he got an A and was coming for the C? This joke would've landed I think less bitterly in these circumstances)? Why have the happy ending resolution involve being publicly outed by a close-friend/online stranger? Why is being publicly out so important to the romantic happy ending?
I've seen people grant that the ending of The Long Game was rushed but I think the rapidity of such a great amount of narrative threads being wrapped up so quickly (Shane's decision to leave Montreal amounts to essentially what is in the paragraph above) means that the story relies on genre expectation to convince the reader of the happy ending and the resolution. And if one is not bought into the genre expectations, or is not expecting them at all, then: "I choose him" and a marriage and a person being rescued/escaping their "unappreciative" family to seek refuge in the place his husband has built and can protect him in, are all essential parts of this story's structure that are not going to be easy to swallow.
I don't think "bad" writing exists. I think the word typically means "not persuasive" or "not meeting form expectations" or "social biases are offensive," which means it's normally a bit meaningless when used by a variety of people all of which with a different idea of its significance. I don't think these books are "bad" writing. But I do think they represent a lot about the form that deserves scrutiny.
So this brought up some good points, and also makes my feelings a bit clearer because Shane and Ilya being together is a happy ending, imo, but doesn't gel with the endings of the series. Also Ilya isn't actually getting non Russian citizenship faster in Canada, especially because his partner doesn't want to be out of the closet. He had a quicker path before Ottawa to US citizenship and I didn't believe the fact Americans didn't like Russians because it was before Russia invaded Ukraine in the 2020s and a few decades after the end of the Cold War.
Also Shane being forced out felt out of line in the series with tone armor. I think the forcing out makes the most sense with Troy at the start of Role Model. And can show why Shane is right to be worried.
Broadly, I don't think there is much disagreement over what is canon and what isn't in the discourse regarding the ending of The Long Game. I think people are just reacting to the story differently. Some people are fine with the ending and some people aren't. What I think is causing this specific discourse tension is that romance genre conventions are being given more scrutiny than maybe they had previously in popular forums. Given that the genre is as popular as it is and consistently traffics in certain conservative ideals (sometimes intentionally, sometimes as a matter of genre form), I think it's fair to consider it with that heightened scrutiny.
Why bring up the paycut if we are not meant to infer he would be taking a paycut? Why bring up him "coming for the C" or being used to standing with the Captains/Alternates if we are not meant to understand the loss of this position as a loss? One of these things was the reason why Ilya signed with Ottawa instead of Montreal:
Shane signing with Ottawa at the end of The Long Game is a situation in which he explicitly gives a couple things up (pay and his leadership position) in favor of playing with his husband and playing on a team he, it's implied, could feel good representing:
Shane will continue to be a great hockey player, Shane will have a great career, Shane will be with his husband, Shane is rescued/escapes from the "vicious" Montreal media, Shane and Ilya will be in the Hall of Fame, Shane and Ilya win at hockey and at love, Shane will still be payed millions of dollars to play a game, Shane will be fine.
The issue that a lot of fans are running up against, I think, is not buying into the convention. Possibly due to not buying into the romance logic or not being convinced by the storytelling within the convention to begin with: this does not read as the happiest ending to some readers. Saying: "he's happy, he chose it," is not a sufficient answer to: "why is this how the story resolves, with the problems that it set up from the start?" It's an answer to a "what happens", not "why" or "why should a reader find this persuasive."
As there was no suggestion in Heated Rivalry that Ottawa was a poor team and that Ilya would be sacrificing wins for signing with them in exchange for being closer to Shane and getting started on achieving a citizenship to ensure his safety from the Russian government, we can understand that Reid's decision to write Ottawa as a team perhaps at the start of a few rebuild years as part of the structure of the romance story she intended. In a very pared down summary: at the beginning of the story, Ilya makes a sacrifice for love; at the end, Shane makes a sacrifice for love. This is a typical romance narrative: equivalent, if not exactly similar, sacrifices being made for the sake of the relationship.
The tension comes from looking at these sacrifices in greater detail and how both characters are positioned in the resolution of this story. Ilya chooses to go to Ottawa as a free agent; Shane chooses to go to Ottawa after a depth of rejection he finds unacceptable (Shane trips in a game against his husband and apparently Montreal media is "vicious" about it and his team is not standing behind him). These are not the same choice. One can argue that Ilya's "choice" was to sacrifice years of his career to play for a rebuild team. Going from Heated Rivalry to The Long Game, I think it's not impossible that this was the point of making Ottawa a rebuild team to begin with, to even out the positions of these two competitive characters. But it's still true that in the story, as it's written, Shane does not choose to leave his team with the same degree of choice as Ilya. Ilya was not reacting to viciousness or a team turned against him or a mistake on ice that was meant to highlight how bad his environment was. Narratively, the trip was there to force Shane's hand to reveal to him what the "right" choice was and what his heart really wanted. It's romantic.
The objection to this ending is not "Shane isn't happy with this happy ending," but rather "This happy ending is not convincing." The romantic ending is not convincing enough for some in the setting of the story which includes athletic competition and being very publicly available, being famous, where the degree of realism for either of these aspects of the romantic setting shifts with the needs of the romantic plot. Shane and Ilya have to hide their feelings from themselves and others: this is the romantic plot tension. Why do they have to hide? Because they are hockey players. The setting is homophobic and they are famous and open to a lot of public judgment. In Heated Rivalry, Ilya is also concerned about the fact that his identity or "promoting" his identity is criminalized: existing as a famous Russian queer hockey player is dangerous. The resolution to this, in Reid's first story about them, is that they undercut their public perceptions, allow themselves to become publicly perceived as friends, and move to a closer geographic distance in order to see each other more often. They are also outed to Shane's parents but they are welcoming so this is also part of the resolution. This is a convincing happy ending to many who find The Long Game unconvincing because it is carving out a way forward with the constraints of their environment that are consistently felt and understood by the reader. They can't come out publicly; neither want to sacrifice their careers; Ilya gets to be a star center and be paid his worth; they get to be closer together than they have been; Ilya gets a chance at the legal protection of his partner's government body. The burden of the relationship is relatively equal in the ending--the unequal aspect being the reference to the reality of an authoritarian government presenting a issue to the characters that is fundamentally intractable towards any design of their relationship "being public."
The Long Game is unconvincing because one aspect that was important in Heated Rivalry is handwaved (I suspect Reid regretted mentioning the Russia-problem in HR because, as I said, it's intractable: realistically speaking, Ilya as a publicly out famous Russian hockey player would be in danger his entire life no matter where he lived--and Shane and Svetlana probably in connection with him) and the burden of the secrecy becomes something to fully solve rather than something to figure out how to endure until it's safe. The logic of the romance overrides the logic of the setting: things that were not truly solvable at the end of HR are solved by being outed, by a declaration of love, by a quick rescue from a bad place (Montreal), and by both persons in the story sacrificing for love. It's unconvincing as well because Shane chooses to go to Ottawa explicitly because he does not want to represent a Montreal that is reacting badly to a mistake on ice--that is, his choice to leave was forced.
Why is Russia not a problem anymore? Why is taking a pay cut not a bar to signing with a partner's team? Why did Shane have to make a mistake that people are being "vicious" about in order to move him to sign with Ottawa? Why is Shane wanting a leadership role a source of humor (Could she not have written he got an A and was coming for the C? This joke would've landed I think less bitterly in these circumstances)? Why have the happy ending resolution involve being publicly outed by a close-friend/online stranger? Why is being publicly out so important to the romantic happy ending?
I've seen people grant that the ending of The Long Game was rushed but I think the rapidity of such a great amount of narrative threads being wrapped up so quickly (Shane's decision to leave Montreal amounts to essentially what is in the paragraph above) means that the story relies on genre expectation to convince the reader of the happy ending and the resolution. And if one is not bought into the genre expectations, or is not expecting them at all, then: "I choose him" and a marriage and a person being rescued/escaping their "unappreciative" family to seek refuge in the place his husband has built and can protect him in, are all essential parts of this story's structure that are not going to be easy to swallow.
I don't think "bad" writing exists. I think the word typically means "not persuasive" or "not meeting form expectations" or "social biases are offensive," which means it's normally a bit meaningless when used by a variety of people all of which with a different idea of its significance. I don't think these books are "bad" writing. But I do think they represent a lot about the form that deserves scrutiny.
So I have an au idea spawned on the fact I feel like Ilya had visa issues to get him to Canada, and I didn't believe why he didn't have his US citizenship or worked towards it because that was the easiest path forward. I think she wanted Shane and Ilya to be in Canada, and to keep that and have Ilya go to Ottawa, my solution is to have Ilya play in Toronto for an even bigger rivalry. Ilya is the captain when Troy comes, and Troy is a coin toss between Ilya and Dallas. Troy chooses Dallas because Dallas goes for him and Ilya doesn't have the mental space to be a role model like when he is the captain in Ottawa.
Another issue is the fact Shane was forced out of the closet, which of all of the main characters, that felt like Shane's arc was cut short. If anyone was going to be forced out, the most interesting and the one that fits the most with the pattern of the books is Troy at the beginning of the book.
areudirty
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
prguitarman
germansingergirl
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
romaincrisis
dailybridgerton
