Question: how do you feel about Skip? Because I feel like in a lot of ways, Kip was kinda asking the same thing Ilya does: me or Hockey?
Because Scott was potentially in a position to lose it all and after just a few weeks, Kip couldn't handle being a secret and was basically like "call me when you can come out" (and risk your career).
Oh i have some THOUGHTS
Fundamentally, you cannot ask someone to come out of the closet for you. If you think you (or a character) can demand that you have a concerning misunderstanding of the queer experience and the difficulties associated with coming out. I personally donât like the out/closeted plot line EVER in media because it is rarely handled well. Skip isnât the worse example, but it doesnât exactly make it an easy watch. I donât like the âomg why canât you just come meet my friendsâ as it reads as very immature / unaware and is definitely putting pressure on Scott (even if itâs not to come out directly). The âcoming out + now we can be happyâ-ness of it all is problematic but thats another post.
What I think makes skip more complex is the point in which Kip realises it wasnât going to work for him. It appears that he knows he canât demand Scott to come out but has also realised he canât handle being with someone so closeted.
Now, I donât really think any queer person with that much community and (implied) experience would ever think theyâd be happy to go back into the closet. Thus I have a hard time believing that Kip thought this was something that could work. On that basis, he never should have dated Scott in the first place and it is unfair to enter into a relationship with someone closeted and expect that to change. I might have something to say how money influences this (power)dynamic but that is also another post.
Nothing really suggests Kip had ulterior motives so I guess we can just proceed on the assumption that he came to realise he couldnât handle it and was just stupidly naĂŻve. To that, I donât think it is wrong for him to leave. I do think it is wrong for him to frame it as an ultimatum (eg/ âeither come out or we are doneâ) but I donât really think Kip did that explicitly. It is a really hard situation but ultimately if the relationship is causing unhappiness it should end. In its ending, there cannot be any blame or pressure put on Scott â Kip knew exactly what he walked into.
Itâs the same with the career question. It is absolutely fair to realise that you cannot be happy dating someone who prioritises their career over you. It is not okay to accuse or shame someone for that decision and attempt to guilt them into changing it. Of course wanting to break up for a particular reason does put pressure on the other party, but I donât think there is a better outcome because staying in an unhappy relationship will eventually lead to bigger problems. The best thing would be to never enter into the relationship but hindsight is 20/20
The issue I have with what Ilya said is (1) he knows; (2) he is in the exact same situation and (3) it is framed as an accusation. Kip seems to have realised this was something he couldnât handle and taken the best bad option. It is not the best outcome, but i think it is more complicated than Ilya being asshole 5000.
I can't remember exactly - been a minute since I read Game Changer - but wasn't Kip originally thinking the night he went home with Scott, it was just a hookup?
I know it was dramatized that way in the series - which is why he's getting dressed when Scott asks "what're you doing?" & "can you stay?". But I have a vague memory that that was Kip's thinking in the book too, or maybe it was Elena who said something like "you were supposed to hook up for a few weeks" like as an ego boost for Kip. Which then puts them in the "accidentally fell in love" trope.
I found Reid's timeline for Scott/Kip -> Scott coming out ridiculous. I know many people are like "they fucked up the timeline!" & that Jacob admitted they fucked it up in post-production...
But frankly it's WAY more realistic that it took Scott 3 years to fully come out, than 4 months. I'm supposed to believe that 1) a pro hockey player, who's been 2) deeply closeted his entire life and career - except for the 3) couple weeks a year in non-hockey playing countries where he has all his gay hookups to get him through the rest of his year - can & will go from deeply closeted (such that NO ONE KNOWS he's gay except Kip) to 4) "I'm gay, teammates/team/world! & here's my boyfriend I'm kissing on the ice after winning the Cup" IN FOUR MONTHS.
Oh, and iirc book!Scott is also basically fine with this - he's very nervous but he's 1) not at all crippled by fear, anxiety, trepidation; 2) he doesn't need (or get!) any professional help or prescription pharmaceuticals to help him live those four months (or three years) of a crazy double life, 3) while hiding his hot boyfriend he can't stop smexin', and 4) presenting himself as a diametrically opposed straight-acting hockey captain to all of New York. 5) He has no queer friends other than Kip, he has no community, no family other than his teammates (who havr no idea he's gay) - yet 6) Scott just manages to do all that and come out as gay in FOUR months with 7) no emotional support other than Kip's twue wuv...? Rilly??
That just seemed unbelievably unrealistic to me. I'm glad Jacob screwed up the timeline. It makes it way more realistic, time-wise. Plus we see at the end that Kip, Elena, and George Grady are at the Cup-winning game - which suggests that Scott actually had a support system other than Kip to embark on this life-changing journey. Way more realistic!
tbf ottawa wasnât a bad team until tlg, the way it was described at first made it sound like they were halfway through a rebuild at the very least
True, I think I just enjoyed the montreal / boston + rivalry of it all. They were making the playoffs every other year with some pretty warranted competitiveness. I did not like the âoh btw Ilya keeps losing nowâ. It is so stupid but I wouldâve liked more hockey and more time spent on the tension between the two teams (but that isnât a real crit and more of a wishlist)
I also get the allure of being on the same team, but initially I was DEVASTATED to learn i was getting no more rivalry. I am aware it is not a popular take lol
I am going to be the only person on this app to talk about Common Goal but that scene where Kyle edges Eric is genuinely the best one in the series. This is probably my most controversial post of all time. Post tweet.
i just think the woman who gave shane issues with food as a way of depicting him as 'focusing on that instead of his very sad boyfriend' was not actually thoughtfully or meaningfully doing anything with shane's storyline in tlg. personally.
The 3 main reoccurring black characters in the Game Changers universe have all been given the same trait (being described as loud or yelling) which is also a racist stereotype. This was something I picked up while listening to Common Goal and thought to look into more as it sounded familiar.
In Heated Rivalry JJ is explicitly described as loud.
In Common Goal Carter is explicitly described as loud.
Now, Bood isnât explicitly described as loud but is described as yelling disproportionately in comparison to other characters.
For Role Model, named characters are described as having âyelledâ 12 times (counting the one repeatedly named instance of Troy yelling at Dallas Kent as 1 and not including generalised yelling during a certain event). The breakdown is: 1 for Dallas Kent, 1 for Ilya, 1 for Wyatt, 2 for Dykstra, 3 for Bood, and 4 for Tory.
In TLG, named characters are described to have yelled 11 times. Break down is: 1 for Shane, 1 for Ilya, 1 for Coach, 1 for Crowell, AND 7 TIMES for Bood.
This was honestly a questionable characterisation choice, especially when you have a random side character beating (or losing by 1) to the angsty mains who are arguing the whole time. I am not even kidding, I think every time Bood appears in a scene he is the only character yelling for no reason.
To the point of the post, how the fuck do you manage to attribute to every reoccurring black character the same racist stereotype? There isnât even a half asked excuse of âwell itâs just a character trait i liked for himâ because really? All three? Nor is there the excuse of âi do this to all charactersâ because trust me, i checked! Max and Ilya are introduced as being loud, and Harris is described as laughing loudly (a lot). That is still disproportionate representation. See above for my breakdown of yelling.
And I am sure this wasnât an intentional inclusion, it is just so questionable and highlights some unconscious biases. i think this type of thing is worth keeping in mind when making the argument that other POC characters traits happening to align with stereotypes has nothing to do with their race. When HR was published JJ being âloudâ was one instance I am sure would be called just a character choice, but by TLG it is a pattern.
Clearly there is room for stereotyping to seep into this writing and it would be nice to stop pretending that we need 5 different characters of the same race to establish the pattern.
Idk if this is a hot take (I tried posting about it before but some ppl got offended so I was like nvm) but I feel like RR wrote Shane very obviously as the âwomanâ in the relationship. Not even that he is overly feminized but that the relationship fits a heteronormative role with him fulfilling the feminine roles. Like besides the obvious in HR (smaller, hairless, exclusively bottoms, falls for the Bad Boy (and I think she wrote him as Asian for these reasons which is a whole other can of worms)), in TLG he is filling the female role of a standard romance. I mean his ending is literally like a hallmark movie. He was too dedicated to his job and he needed to just stop caring about such silly things and dedicate his life to a husband and then he could finally be happy! He needed to stop caring about superficial things like his diet and just have fun! Actually he was selfish for caring about his career and he should be focused on healing his man who is dark and angsty and has so many complex feelings (obviously Shane doesnât get to have depth and dark emotions). Like he literally has to give up his captaincy and move to a small town and thatâs a happy ending. I really do feel like if he was explicitly written as a woman, some of the same ppl who defend it now would feel like the ending was reductive and misogynistic
Anyway all of this is what makes the stepford wife curse so perfect to me. Heâs literally been reduced of his autonomy and turned into nothing but a husband (wife) for Ilya! And itâs so infuriating! Idk what point Iâm making I just enjoy ranting lol and I very much appreciate your au
Oh youâve come to the right place. Iâve had almost this exact rant before. I have actually compared Shane Hollanderâs ending to the high achieving female hallmark lead leaving her big city career behind for small town heteronormativity before I concluded that that was actually insulting to hallmark leads because at least they got the dignity of choosing the love interest instead of having to be like âyeah I got hate crimed at work and all my friends turned on me and I was subjected to intense public humiliation that destroyed my reputation beyond repair so now the only option that is left to me is your fucking Christmas tree farm. Actually Iâm so low right now that Iâm not even confident that your Christmas tree farm will take me.â
One of the biggest defenses I hear about the game changers novels in general is that they are the way they are due to the genre which isâabsolutely bonkers wild to me, like, Iâve been doing literary analysis and criticism for a long time and I have never in my life seen people analyze books as if the genre itself held a gun to the authorâs head while they were writing before this fandom.
A genre is just a broad system of categorization. It is a way that we group and describe stories that share similar characteristics. But that does not mean that every single book within a given genre must have all the same characteristics. Art would completely stagnate if that were the case.
What actually is the romance genre?
The definition is flexible. Art is an inherently philosophical pursuit. There have been people over the years who have tried to set out defining characteristics of certain genres, but this is always going to just be someone making conjecture based on their own observations. For example, Aristotle tried to define tragedy in his Poetics, and his musings remain a foundational text in the genre to this day. I personally was hugely influenced by Aristotle and how he approached tragedy in developing my own style.
I still break Aristotleâs rules from the Poetics all the time.
Because I donât have to fucking listen to that guy.
Heâs fucking dead.
Even if he wasnât heâs not the boss of me to begin with.
There is no King of Storytelling out there who set the binding limits of what can be achieved within a certain genre. There is no central artistic authority setting rules that all artists have to abide by. We have just been fucking eyeballing this shit since the advent of literature. We have a bunch of stories that seem similar to one another so we group them into the same category and once in a while some philosopher will try and theorize about what characteristics exactly makes us say these stories similar. Thatâs all that genre fucking is.
And the thing about art is that it should always be challenging its own limits. It should change. It should evolve. Acting like genre is this confining force that we must bow to inherently misunderstands the nature of art. If we let set rules dictating how art develops, then it will never advance.
So, again, we do not have a single binding definition of what exactly makes a romance novel a romance novel. We just have academics who have theorized and offered their own definitions for what makes a story romantic. You can pick a definition you like, or you can come up with your own, because there are no real binding rules in art. Thatâs what makes it art.
One popular definition of the romance genre is the one posited by the Romance Writers of America. RWA is a nonprofit that was formed in the 80s that was meant to encourage the growth of the romance genre. It used to be one of the most successful writing associations in America and it recently declined after its board was sued for racial discrimination. And I think itâs important to keep that in mind because I think itâs important to always question where our ideals come from. I donât offer their definition to say you have to accept it, just to say that this is the definition that I have seen cited time and time again in academic articles on the genre. Nicholas Sparks has stated that he writes love stories, not romance because his stories donât meet RWAâs named characteristics. If we are just looking for the most popular definition of the romance genre, Iâd say itâs this one.
The Romance Writers of America argue that the romance genre is defined by two characteristics:
1. A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as they want as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.
2. An Emotionally Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.
Which is hilarious to me.
Because the long game breaks these genre conventions.
Shane is not rewarded with emotional justice at the end of the long game. He is turned on by all of his friends. He is humiliated. He isnât rewarded; he is punished. His ending is inextricably intertwined with loss, and there is no emotional justice for it because we donât deal with it at all. His very last scene shows him still troubled by the loss of his captaincy he just suffered. Shaneâs ending is an unhappy one.
âBut itâs happy because he gets to be with Ilya and thatâs all he really needsâ you cannot reasonably make this argument even under the internal rules of the books themselves. You want to know how I know that? Because Ilya doesnât lose half as much as Shane loses when he moves to Ottawa and the books themselves act like he suffered more than fucking Jesus.
Ilya keeps his captaincy. He keeps his high pay. He keeps his first line position. No one questions his integrity. He doesnât get to keep the team that drafted him but he 1) canonically did not like them that much and 2) gets to choose to leave them. The worst injury his career suffers is having to be on a struggling team.
The book and the author emphasizes the misery in his fate nevertheless. This is a sacrifice Ilya made for Shane and Shane was selfish to ask it of him. But the idea that Ilya sacrificed shit for Shane is a fundamentally false premise.
We know exactly why Ilya moved to Ottawa because the entire conversation is written down in heated rivalry. Ilya comes up with the idea of leaving Boston and joining a Canadian team before he ever talks to Shane. He says he wants a non-Russian passport and says that America is not so good for Russians at the moment. They discuss him signing with Montreal and he refuses explicitly so that he wonât have to take a paycut. Ilya fantasizes about getting to be on the same team as Shane and to be with him all the time but he decides it would never work because Montreal could not afford them both. But when Shane is faced with the same issue with Ottawa, it is quite literally laughed off as a joke.
Shane proposes Ottawa because it needs a star center and it was nowhere near their cap space. At no point does he bring up the fact that itâs his hometown or that his parents live there. And Ilya never raises any concerns about Ottawa being a shitty team because it is not described as a shitty team in a single place in the entire goddamn book.
Writers get the luxury of setting their own rules and stakes in the worlds they create. They can take creative liberties. They are bound by very little. But the one thing that binds them? Is their own fucking writing.
You do not get to write a conversation where the only concerns discussed were about making sure the move didnât harm Ilyaâs career and not mention convenience to Shane once and turn around and say that actually this was a huge career sacrifice that Shane selfishly imposed upon Ilya for his convenience. If you wanted it to be that way, you should have fucking written that to begin with.
But, nevertheless, we all emphasize how Ilya sacrificed and suffered joining Ottawa ââfor Shane.âââ Which means we do not get to turn around and pretend that Shaneâs ending isnât marked by misery. He loses his captaincy, his pay, his reputation, the team he loved and dreamed of retiring on, almost every friend heâs fucking had for the last ten yearsâhe loses so much more than the sacrifices that were deemed immeasurable for Ilya. His ending is defined by unhappiness and his final scene in the book shows him still upset by his loss. As much as we want to call this a happy ending, half of the relationship isnât fucking happy at the end. This book does not even fucking conform to the most popular definition of the romance genre and we are all out here acting like the genre itself held a gun to the authors fucking head and made her type.
I usually see the âmust conform to the romance genreâ argument raised in defense of many points, but the one I want to talk about is how Iâve seen it used in defense of the Ottawa ending itself: it is the idea that they must end the book married and on the same team because it is a romance book. Iâve even seen it used in defense of this idea that Shane should lose everything but Ilya because Ilyaâs somehow all he needs.
First off, no.
How many romance books have you read that end with the love interests in the same fucking job? Thatâs not even a trope within the fucking genre.
But giving up a job for love is very common in the genre. Itâs not a requirement of the genre, but itâs common. Having happily ever after be a picket fence in the suburbs with a dog and kids on the way is another common ending of the genre. For a queer romance, Shane and Ilyaâs ending is aggressively heteronormative. And Shane is undoubtedly treated as the woman in the relationship, down to being paid sixty cents on the fucking dollar and having his dad help Ilya before the wedding because heâs the groom and his mom helping him the bride. The book places excruciating emphasis on how how small and pretty and delicate Shane is compared to Ilya, like a doll like a woman. Again and again, he is cast as the feminine of the two.
And his fate is that of the strong career woman of a Hallmark movie: heâs giving up his career and moving back to his hometown to be with his man whose fucking Christmas tree farm is for some reason a better career path than a 160k+ salaried position in NYC plus benefits. The woman leaves her career for love and that is all she fucking needs to be happy. Never mind that we never ask him to leave the goddamn Christmas tree farm for the big city. It is one of the most common endings in the genre.
And it didnât come about in a vacuum.
I said earlier that thereâs no king of storytelling who gets to set binding rules for a genre. And thatâs true. But we get kind of close. There are people who do not have the authority or the power set rules for what an entire genre isâbut they do get to try and bottleneck what stories within a genre reaches the public.
Itâs book editors. Itâs producers. Itâs censorship boards.
People have always, always, always tried to protect patriarchal ideals by limiting what art reaches public consumption. Louisa May Alcottâs editors refused to publish Little Women until she married off her independent female protagonist. She expressed explicit dismay at the demand that the only ending she could have was marriage, âas if that were the only end and aim of a womanâs life.â The happy ending of that story is the woman being married off because some old patriarchal fucks in 1868 decided that it was the only happy ending a woman was allowed to have. These types of endings became common because they were the only endings allowed to be published.
This happens again and again and again in history. Look at the Hays Code. The Hays Code was a conservative censorship guideline in Hollywood that was in place from the 30s to the 60s. And it wasnât instituted randomly. It happened because before the institution of the Hays Code, there was a huge wave of innovative movies that was challenging traditional family values. The 20s to the early 30s had this wave of racy, feminist, edgy films. We had major motion pictures about openly bisexual cross-dressing queens (the literal, royal kind. Like of Sweden.) in fucking 1933 and movies like that spooked old, traditional assholes into enacting the Hays Code. It was enacted to protect patriarchal, heteronormative values because art was challenging those values.
Women once again had to conform to traditional heteronormative endings. Their happy endings could only be found in motherhood and marriage because the Code required you to promote the âcorrectâ standards of life and that meant traditional, patriarchal standards of life. The happy ending is to be a wife and a mother and go to the goddamn white picket fence suburbs with the dog and the babies en route. And if you have a character that defies those traditional values, the Code demands that they meet an unhappy end or the movie does not get made. You must punish the subversive.
The Hays Code is the reason why bury your gays exists. It is explicitly why that trope started to begin with. Queer characters so often meet tragic ends in media because for decades you were required to narratively punish queer characters or the movie did not get made. And even after the Hays Code was disbanded, so many queer characters still end up in the fucking ground because thatâs how the story always goes. Thatâs the trope. Thatâs the genre convention. Thatâs the common thread in art. Ninety fucking years ago some asshole decided the only good queer person was a dead queer person and his thumb is still on the fucking scales today because people act like they are beholden to how other artists did it before.
We decide what a genre and its common themes and tropes are by looking at similar existing stories and identifying the common threads between them. But we cannot forget that sometimes the only stories that are allowed to exist are the ones that conform to traditional values. Maybe we would be able to imagine a happy ending for a romance other than marriage and a house in your hometown with a dog and the promise of kids if any other goddamn ending was allowed to be published. Maybe it wouldnât be so common in the genre if every other ending wasnât choked out.
We cannot pretend like the norms of past art dictate how we create art today or we will never shed the influence of misogynistic, homophobic, racist, conservatives from 30, 50, 100 years ago. Write whatever you goddamn please and do not pretend like the ghost of fucking genre past has a gun to the authorâs head dictating every plot point. I promise you it doesnât. Art is an inherently creative pursuit. You are supposed to innovate and do new things with it. If you act like you are beholden to how other people did it, then you are doing it wrong.
Guys i am so sorry but i HATE the implication that either of them would hyphenate their last names.
The discussion in TLG about Hollander-Rozanov /Rozanov-Hollander / Rozander is clearly a joke but it is also intended to apply to a child and not themselves.
It is very common for professionals to keep their last names because it has significance to their brand. It would practically force commentators to refer to two of the best players in the league by their numbers. Also please imagine Messi announcing that he is going to hyphenate his last name or Taylor Swift announcing that she is now Taylor Swift-Kelce.
I get it is cute but omg if i was either of their managers Iâd tell them no. I am begging this not to become canon
See the thing about Montreal is. To me, even as someone who does not live in Canada and only knows the history of Quebec through reading about it, everything about how their outing goes down in TLG leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
This tied with the fact that this is a city known for its hockey riots and for standing by their players when they are being treated terribly by the front office or the coaches (See PK Subban, Patrick Roy). That nothing is mentioned about how this city reacts to Shane's outing and a reader is generally led to believe that the reception is so terrible that Shane 'didnât think he could ever feel good about representing that team again' is just. đŹđŹđŹ
There is also. how characters that are presumably quebecois are portrayed. Quebec as a province has a history of facing assimilation efforts from English canada and also economic disenfranchisement of french speaking canadians. (Caveat, both english and french settlers are equally culpable in the cultural genocide of the first nations, but the descendents of the french settlers also faced oppression from the english)
So given how Rachel Reid treats Shane's experience as a POC (which is by pretending there is no such experience which is a crazy thing to do) I can't help but be kind of weirded out by how we see her portray the quebecois.
The three characters on page accusing Shane of tripping is J.J. Boiziau, Drapeau and Comeau. All francophone names. It might be possible that she just went with more quebecois names for players in Montreal but them being the ones that are primarily accusing Shane and the only one on his side being Hayden Pike... it does not inspire a lot of confidence in me. I don't think its intentional but I also don't think how she writes shane as an almost caricature is intentional. It's more like there was no further introspection done on the implications on what was written. I am not saying that Montreal's players or it's front office cannot be homophobic, but that there seems to almost be a bias in which of them are being shown as the face of that homophobia. But one could argue that JJ redeems himself (it's off-page if I remember correctly but it's something).
Maybe I am overanalysing this. I don't live in canada and this is not my lived experience. But I do wish more of the fandom looked into the history of Montreal before saying things like 'fuck Montreal' (I know it's a shortened version of 'fuck the montreal metros' but guys. it's still not great.)
why the FUCK is Shane the only 100% bottom in the entire series? We couldnât have made them switch sometimes like every other couple â especially given the racial stereotypes?
Momentary pause in my bitching. One thing I am so appreciative of in the Game Changers series is the choice to make most characters in the series (everyone other than hollanov) at least a little bit vers.
Now, i am pro disgustingly self-indulgent smut. I am completely willing to accept whatever freak shit an author decides the characters are into. On that basis, play with your dolls however you want but I am just acknowledging a trend.
Most mlm smut is written by (straight) women. Invariably, that leads to strict assigned roles of a top/bottom and the bottom character is used as a mirror to the authors desires. This leads to a heteronormative lens placed on the couple and sometimes internalised sexism as well. For example, there are countless fics where: Shane described as physically weaker than Ilya, Shane does most of the domestic labour, Shane becomes the mother to [assortment of rookies], Ilya is the dad to [assortment of rookies], Ilya doesnât cry, Ilya never sucks dick (but will eat ass), etc etc etc.
RR has honestly shattered that expectation with literally every other couple she writes. My soul levitated to the fucking ceiling when she wrote a feminine twink who tops a hockey player who we are well informed is giant. I know it is not a favourite and I have a number of thoughts about where it could be improved (eg/ opioid addiction should have been dealt with better) but she shattered some stereotypes with that one. I also have a slight feeling that that is the reason some people strongly dislike certain books in the series. I genuinely think the expectation of heteronormativity ruins realistic gay sex for some people.
On another note, I will say I am curious as to why hollanov are the only couple who wonât switch. I would love to know why that choice was made not only implicitly but explicitly in TLG.
shane cockwarming ilya this, shane cockwarming ilya that⊠this fandom tends to forget that ilya is a throat goat and freaking loves to suck a dick, he swallows cause he âdoes not mindâ (i.e. moans harder when shane cums down his throat than shane himself.. you know - the person cumming)
add to it that ilya loves resting his head in peoples laps, getting his hair played with.. and has an oral fixation
so what i am saying is that ilya loves, loves, LOVES! cockwarming shane - sometimes they just chill on the couch, watching a renovation show or a movie ilya isnât particularly interested in so while he rests his head in shaneâs lap he simply turns around, tugs shaneâs sweats down and puts shaneâs cock in his mouth
they stay like that for a long time, ilya gets all floaty and sleepy bc shaneâs hand is stroking through his hair, lightly scratching at his scalp and his cock is in his mouth
when ilya gets antsy again he starts sucking him off and gets him to come quickly, swallowing at the end of course and goes back to cockwarming him if shane wants to continue watching his show
@kissingpractise you are right and should say it! a lot of how ilyaâs attraction is described by a portion of the fandom is rooted in biphobia with heteronormative roles just glommed on top of it all
I think a lot of the issues in TLG come from a misalignment of the purpose of the book. RR says she doesnât want to write trauma porn (which is fine) but at the same time wants to write about coming out and hockey culture in a way that becomes trauma porn.
Consequently, it reads as though the fear of creating another trauma porn story has caused an avoidance of paying proper homage to the difficulty of those events. It feels a little âif I donât write it as traumatic then itâs not trauma pornâ. But the thing is if you donât want to give forced outing proper attention and care then donât write it.
They did not need to get outed in that way. Arguably, we are probably running through too many conflicts for such a short book. The book avoids a meaningful discussion about coming out as we completely skip over it for Shane and delegitimise the trauma of being outed for both of them. The events are trauma porn events (forced outing / ostracism) but with too little of the word count dedicated to examining the consequences of it. By including these themes without handling them with care, they are trivialised.
The events of TLG either needed to be two books that take on the trauma porn label to handle the issues adequately â or they should not have been included at all.
I think there's a part of Shane that genuinely believes that when he finishes his last game, they will take him out back and shoot him like a sick dog.
Question: how do you feel about Skip? Because I feel like in a lot of ways, Kip was kinda asking the same thing Ilya does: me or Hockey?
Because Scott was potentially in a position to lose it all and after just a few weeks, Kip couldn't handle being a secret and was basically like "call me when you can come out" (and risk your career).
Oh i have some THOUGHTS
Fundamentally, you cannot ask someone to come out of the closet for you. If you think you (or a character) can demand that you have a concerning misunderstanding of the queer experience and the difficulties associated with coming out. I personally donât like the out/closeted plot line EVER in media because it is rarely handled well. Skip isnât the worse example, but it doesnât exactly make it an easy watch. I donât like the âomg why canât you just come meet my friendsâ as it reads as very immature / unaware and is definitely putting pressure on Scott (even if itâs not to come out directly). The âcoming out + now we can be happyâ-ness of it all is problematic but thats another post.
What I think makes skip more complex is the point in which Kip realises it wasnât going to work for him. It appears that he knows he canât demand Scott to come out but has also realised he canât handle being with someone so closeted.
Now, I donât really think any queer person with that much community and (implied) experience would ever think theyâd be happy to go back into the closet. Thus I have a hard time believing that Kip thought this was something that could work. On that basis, he never should have dated Scott in the first place and it is unfair to enter into a relationship with someone closeted and expect that to change. I might have something to say how money influences this (power)dynamic but that is also another post.
Nothing really suggests Kip had ulterior motives so I guess we can just proceed on the assumption that he came to realise he couldnât handle it and was just stupidly naĂŻve. To that, I donât think it is wrong for him to leave. I do think it is wrong for him to frame it as an ultimatum (eg/ âeither come out or we are doneâ) but I donât really think Kip did that explicitly. It is a really hard situation but ultimately if the relationship is causing unhappiness it should end. In its ending, there cannot be any blame or pressure put on Scott â Kip knew exactly what he walked into.
Itâs the same with the career question. It is absolutely fair to realise that you cannot be happy dating someone who prioritises their career over you. It is not okay to accuse or shame someone for that decision and attempt to guilt them into changing it. Of course wanting to break up for a particular reason does put pressure on the other party, but I donât think there is a better outcome because staying in an unhappy relationship will eventually lead to bigger problems. The best thing would be to never enter into the relationship but hindsight is 20/20
The issue I have with what Ilya said is (1) he knows; (2) he is in the exact same situation and (3) it is framed as an accusation. Kip seems to have realised this was something he couldnât handle and taken the best bad option. It is not the best outcome, but i think it is more complicated than Ilya being asshole 5000.
I don't think I've seen enough discourse about Ilya just laughing off the whole 'getting publicly outed'
He grew up in Russia and in Grigori's house.
Getting outed the way they did is traumatizing and a violation of privacy. He hasn't been in therapy that long. There's no way he'd just watch the video on the couch and hehe haha and give Shane a quick smooch and pull a Serena Van der Woodsen a la Gossip Girl and gtg.
