Most baffling thing to me about the GC series and HR/TLG in particular, is that RR took inspiration from Sid Crosby for Shane, and yet still says in TLG that Shane is oblivious to the less favourable sides of hockey, as if Sid didn’t spend much of his youth and early years in the NHL being relentlessly targeted by other players AND parents of players during his youth hockey, because of his talent. You’re telling me that Shane Hollander, second coming of hockey Jesus, wasn’t being crushed into the boards by players during his time in youth hockey or having parents making snide remarks because he’s out performing their snot-nosed kids at every turn? Sid had parents saying they wanted to physically hurt him because he was showing up the other kids. Like, absolute insane stuff, and you’re telling me that Shane had none of that? At all? In the late 90s and early 2000s???? Not a chance in hell. And sure, Shane may be a little socially awkward, may not be the best at social interaction, but he’s not a fucking idiot, and would one hundred percent know the difference between over the top chirping and outright hostility, so it’s not like he wouldn’t have noticed being targeted. And that’s before we even get into the fact that he’s a mixed race kid, with a Japanese mother that no doubt went to many if not most of his games as he was growing up. He’d have been targeted for that because children (and most adults) are completely unoriginal when it comes to insults and would’ve definitely had something to say about it. Sure, I can definitely see Shane taking the high road, listening to Yuna and ignoring the majority of it, but that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t be at the receiving end of it and exceedingly aware of it, that he wouldn’t have first hand, intrinsic knowledge of the darker sides of both hockey as a whole and of the NHL in particular. There’s a reason he didn’t want to be out, there’s a reason he didn’t want to announce his relationship with Ilya, and it very likely started when he was barely able to stay up on two skates. That throwaway line in TLG makes Shane out to be both ignorant and stupid, and I dunno. To have Ilya be the one to say it about Shane too? Just makes me feel sad for Shane. And angry. Mostly angry. If RR had explored Shane’s career more realistically, if not as a non-white player in a white-dominated sport (because that seems to be a conversation that she doesn’t want to touch with a ten foot barge pole) then at the very least as a player that faced issues purely from a jealousy standpoint from other players, I think a lot more people probably would’ve understood Shane’s reluctance to coming out or, in Shane’s eyes, being anything but perfectly above reproach.
