Just a girl with strong feelings about fictional characters
Created this blog to have somewhere to stash my mini rants about the hyperfixation of the week.
This week its Heated Rivalry (haven't read the books yet, there was a two month hold list by the time I stumbled on the show, but I will) but the old hyperfixations never die - they just go dormant - and my brain loves to pick up new ones.
Always open to discussion if things can stay civil but life is too hard in the real world to put up with flames while I'm hiding from that to obsess too much over fictional characters.
Look imma be real- Shane isn’t getting “the ick” when Ilya seems to not care about being on a losing team- he’s put off because this isn’t the man he knows. Watching a partner struggle with mental health to the point where they lose their spark- they stop being interested in the hobbies and skills they were once passionate about, the jokes that used to make them cackle are met with bemused smiles or just apathetic silence, they don’t move about the world with the same confidence in their gait- that shit is hard to swallow. Especially when Shane didn’t know that Ilya’s mental health had taken such a dive and also wasn’t much educated on what depression looked like to an outsider. He’s not being bitchy- he’s lowkey confused and concerned and irritated because he misses Ilya. It’s funny to make jokes about Shane getting icked out, but that’s such a shallow representation of the struggle of watching a partner crumble and being unable to identify exactly what’s happening.
I had another thought about heated rivalry that’s been in my head for a while (though this one is more lighthearted than my Troy post!) I think one of the reasons Shane in the show is a much more complete character to me is that the show isn’t afraid to show him being hurt by Ilyas actions. Others have pointed this out, but a lot of Ilyas more controversial actions in the books are sort of insulated by a bunch of justifications for his actions, almost as if the author is afraid of the reader even temporarily disliking him due to his actions.
one example of this is the Sochi scene where Ilya brushes shane off. In the books, Shane has a moment in his internal monologue where he says something along the lines of “Ilyas being mean to me right now but I can tell he doesn’t actually mean it” and he’s not really shown as internalizing Ilyas behavior. Also I am not saying Ilya is evil for behaving this way, his actions are very understandable however the show explains his behavior without removing the very reasonable consequence of it being hurtful towards Shane.
another good example of this is the Vegas scene. In the books, Shane is more pissed off than hurt and the scene in the bathroom is a lot more lighthearted (which Reid has said was the tone she was going for in that scene). While part of the tone being different in the show can be explained as the show being more serious than the books overall, it also allows the audience to empathize with Shane and adds depth to his character. I also don’t think Ilya is totally unlikeable for his behavior in this episode either! We still have the context of him having to go back to Russia and the pressure he’s under, but we also get to see Shane have complicated feelings.
I know a lot of people are worried about how season 2 will be handled because of the book’s very obvious Ilya bias, but based on the first season I feel pretty optimistic. One of my biggest critiques about the long game was that Shane’s emotions felt very flat to the point that his POV chapters barely even felt like we were inside his head, and was especially the case when Ilya did anything that could hypothetically hurt him. There are many examples of this throughout the book, but the one that sticks out to me the most is always Ilyas dismissive reaction after Shane is threatened by the commissioner, which I also discuss in my Troy post. In their big fight scene, there’s also a part where Ilya backs him up against a wall aggressively, but it’s fine because Shane apparently wasn't threatened by him (I rolled my eyes so hard at this btw. You make me read all that bullshit about how much bigger Ilya is but Shane doesn’t feel any sort of negative emotion about Ilyas behavior??) In fact, Shane doesn’t really feel anything after the fight except for guilty, even though Ilya acknowledges that what he was asking of Shane was kind of crazy out of the blue. Shane’s emotions after the scene could have reasonably been more complicated in the way ilya’s were, but they weren’t because Shane was supposed to be in the wrong (another recurring theme in this series is the idea that wanting to stay closeted is bad, but that’s a whole other post).
Anyways my point is that it is possible to give Shane complicated nuanced feelings without taking away from Ilya’s also complicated and nuanced feelings. In fact doing so makes the narrative stronger because the audience doesn’t feel the imbalance between the emotional depth of the characters as much. And I hope season 2 does this!
cackling about the idea of shane and ilya getting separated on the bench from time to time and the public thinks "oooh, trouble in paradise? the rivalry rearing its head again?? hollander getting fed up with rozanov??"
and the truth is that the team was playing against someone ilya and/or shane ESPECIALLY hates, which means shane was dropping the most vicious, lethal reads known to man and making ilya crack tf up to the point that they were attracting attention and the coach was just afraid of someone reading lips and getting them all in trouble
and signficantly, the three person buffer between them just keeps shane from SAYING his comments
he and ilya are still leaning forward and backward to look at each other and exchange "mhm" "mhm" looks that still make it clear they're still communicating their thoughts perfectly fine
see the thing is shane WOULD have mysterious powers and never know it because they just don't coincide with his hockey career. like i easily see him as being able to control the weather or something and he just doesnt gaf. the games are all indoors anyway so he doesnt care or know why it always happens to storm like crazy after the metros lose no matter where they are or what season it is. thats got nothing to do with him!
Not controlling the weather or their game never would have been snowed out ruining his plans to hook up with Ilya. Unless it snowed because he was nervous? 🤔
But many other secret powers would be quickly dismissed as does it affect hockey? —> no? —> don’t care. 🤷
Ultimately what disappoints me about Rachel Reid's approach to writing about how race affects Shane's characterization isn't it being nonexistent, because I actually wouldn't say it is completely. It's that she's the one responsible for pulling a bait and switch by dropping crumbs throughout the writing and laying a foundation for making HERSELF appear ready to explore the impacts of it on his character in depth, only to then completely ignore that aspect as if she never even touched on it. This isn't a cut case of readers pressuring her to address parts of his character that she never signed up for, this is something she herself alludes to being ready and equipped to delve into and then chooses not to.
For instance in Shane's first meeting with Commissioner Crowell in TLG it's not only directly detailed that Crowell is weaponizing Shane's tokenization in the league against him but also that Shane himself is fully aware of how he's being targeted.
Can y'all imagine my intrigue reading this scene, thinking how full circle TLG was coming and enthusiastically expecting further in the book how the institutional racism will finally be addressed and confronted as a part of Hollanov's and more specifically Shane's conflict with the league...only for Rachel to pretty much go '"who said that?" and it never be mentioned again?
I'm throwing a prayer circle around Unrivaled as we speak but I'm not holding out hope it gets the proper respect in that book either.
im seeing a lot of confusion about rachel reid's discord comments, because how can she assert that her major notes for TLG were about shane's selfishness and stupidity and inattentiveness to his sad boyfriend, when shane is the one who reaches out to ilya, gently suggests he's mentally struggling and could talk to a professional, and ilya is the one who rudely shuts him down?
meanwhile, when shane is the one going through it—he's anxious about being outed and doesnt want to come out due to the league's homophobia, he's personally threatened by the commissioner, he struggles with disordered eating, if not an outright eating disorder (outright saying he diets for a sense of control, feeling guilty about tasting lemonade on his boyfriend's lips, his low point is eating one singular snicker's bar)—ilya fails to reciprocate empathy. shane tells ilya about the commissioner threatening him and ilya basically goes great now my bitch bf will never want to come out 🙄 (compare this with how he reacts when his reformed bigot white bestie troy was threatened by the commissioner: ilya is automatically protective of him.) shane starts an unhealthily restrictive diet due to his fears of aging (read: being pushed) out of the sport, and ilya looks down on him for it and mocks his diet to his face. shane, who is a hypervisible athlete of color in an extremely white sport, looks uncomfortable in a room full of white people talking about the league's issues, and ilya deduces that this is because shane doesnt know "the dark side of hockey" the way he does. this is a ridiculous assumption that should reveal a worrying lack of empathy for his partner of color, especially since throughout the series there is a pattern of other hockey players targeting shane with homophobic language, which ilya has been present for. except rachel herself states shane has no trauma from the sport and shane's own pov asserts that hockey has never made him sad.
do you guys get where im going with this? the elephant in the room is race. rachel narratively blames shane, hyperscrutinizes his flaws and justifies or provides excuses for ilya's, because she has implicit racist biases and subconsciously sees empathy as a one-way obligation in their relationship. ilya lacks empathy for shane because she lacks empathy for shane and thinks ilya is right. she monopolizes empathy for ilya because he is white and because she doesnt see characters of color as fully people and capable of having their own interiority or struggles to explore. if you've read tough guy or role model, you can see this same exact thing play out in ryan price and fabian salah's relationship or with troy barrett and his ex adrian dela cruz.
and remember how i said that there's a pattern of other hockey players being homophobic to shane? this is never brought up in shane's pov, not even hinted at. we only see these instances through the pov of white characters and are only given explorations of how they feel, not shane. shane is completely absent except as a prop to make her sadboy white characters feel tormented and angry, and rachel never connects his "self-absorbed" anxieties about wanting to stay closeted to the disproportionate homophobia he already faces, because rachel is uninterested in giving shane grace.
so when rachel says ilya's biggest flaw is his fear of being hurt (note how the language centers his hurt, not how his actions cause hurt), while shane's is his supposed selfishness (is shane not also afraid of being hurt? isnt that where his food issues and unwillingness to come out come from)? when she said shane is too focused on his "ridiculous" diet and not on "actually important things" like his depressed boyfriend? when she said in a reddit AMA that she only gave shane food issues to give ilya something to poke fun at? when that one interviewer asked her about the criticisms of how she wrote her asian character and she pivoted to talking about ilya's childhood trauma? her fetishistic descriptions of shane and fabian, to the point you can tell she wanted to call them exotic and her editor probably told her to tone it down? the way she contrasts adrian's appearance and supposed shortcomings with harris? her insistence that her books are challenging hockey culture while completely dismissing how hostile and dehumanizing it can be to people of color? and last but not least, THE DICK SIZE RANKING?
I haven't read the HR book yet, mostly because I started with GC and I don't find engaging at all.
Mostly because I did believe Scott was a decade older and his book was about the pressure and the heartbreak of having to guide his sexuality and the anxiety and even trauma that Ep3 showed... But there was none of it.
This is to say, I wondered if HR changed some of my "critics" of the show format. Which was how the cuts from episodes don't make sense? I think.
I understand they wanted to make the first 3 episodes end in sad notes so that the last two had a bigger emotions support... But like, how did Shane and Ilya went from the Vegas scene - where Shane is clearly heartbroken and crying on the elevator, and Ilya is cleaning his tear as Shane gets up from bed and dissociates afterwards too... A montage of them having sex over the next years? The same happens with Scott. Scott and Kip broke up before Sochi, fev 2014. And Kip, his dad and BFF are there for his victory in 2017?! Are they together? Did Kip wanted to be there for his ex of 3 years?
Even ep 1 suffers from this. I was really confused. Because they begin texting Jan 2011 but hook up in 2013? The show makes it seem they didn't do it in 2011 because of the Snow that delayed the game... Okay what about the other half a dozen games afterwards? It is never explained. Some people seem to think they were having meeting but not having sex?
Its just, I really don't vibe with GC book. I didn't get the Kip hype either, and I have a lot of problems with the way Elena wants to put pressure on a two months relationship like Kip and Scott have been together for years. And the book has the exact same plotline. The hockey culture plays little party as we barely see it been show negatively.
And I did find that for a show that sold Shane and Ilya romance as "they are the only ones who understand what its like to be on the top"... They never actually speak about it? Or connect over it? Does the book show this?
I just let out a very long sigh in preparation of responding to this lmao because like. There are multiple things going on here, all of them stupid and avoidable.
The cuts in the show mimic the book. Reid does not like conflict. She doesn't know how to introduce conflict. She doesn't know how to build conflict. She doesn't know how to resolve conflict. A lot of the time, what she ends up doing, is introducing a conflict only to solve it instantly, usually in a way that is enormously convenient. But in hr, her strategy was more often to just. Not solve it. Lmao. She would create conflict between Ilya and Shane, have them separate for however much time, and then reunite and act like nothing happened. In theory this is a dynamic she could have purposely given them and written it as part of the conflict but the way she writes it is truly like she just didn't want to deal with resolving the conflict. Because like, she doesn't even have their internal monologues address the fact that they always pretend shit didn't happen.
So that's one thing. But then Tierney made it his whole deal to stay "faithful" to the books and so he is just doing what Reid is doing a lot of the time only it works even less in a show because a show really highlights its absurdity in a way the book can't really. We don't have their inner monologues, and so we are analyzing the characters' actions in a way that isn't necessary in a book, as in, we are trying to interpret what is possibly going on internally while watching a show in a way we don't have to in a book, and this causes us to pay a lot more attention to the fact that the last time they talked it ended poorly and now they're acting like that didn't happen. We're left trying to figure out what piece we missed to get a peek into what going on in their heads when the truth is that there's nothing going on lmao. Tierney just skipped over resolving conflict the same way Reid did.
But with Tierney it's also worse because he condensed a show that needed seven or eight episodes into six episodes and then threw one of those episodes away on skip and so we end up with a story that is at parts too condensed and at other parts missing shit it should have had.
It is funny to me that Tierney's whole thing is staying faithful to the books, as though that's his process, when in reality it seems clear to me that staying faithful to the books is actually his crutch. Tierney knows how to write a scene and up the stakes but one thing he is very bad at is narrative continuity, and he relies on the books for that but the problem with that is Reid is also not very good at narrative continuity. Tierney is able to come up with the entire funeral scene in which Ilya fights with Alexei and the Russian monologue, both of which were well written, contextualizing Ilya's character for us, adding stakes and drama - but he's rarely able to go from a fallout between Shane and Ilya to the next reunion in a way that feels like a natural continuation.
I can only think of two examples. After Ilya ghosts Shane for those six months, Shane actually mentions that Ilya hadn't texted him in six months in the Vegas hotel. The other example is having Shane apologize for fleeing the tuna melt scene, which wasn't in the books. Both are so simple, just a single line in each scene, but they provided that narrative continuity and gave us insight into Shane's thinking. I don't know why Tierney couldn't do more of this throughout the show, or why, if he could have and simply chose not to, he didn't want to. Maybe I can buy neither of them mentioning Vegas penthouse, since addressing Vegas penthouse might hit a little too close to home, might risk revealing too much - but there are still many things that could have been done to make that transition feel more natural, and I think it's insane we don't get either of them acknowledging the fucking club like I can't believe I'm supposed to believe neither of them are ever like hey remember that time we bumped into each other at the club and it felt like a saw trap lmao like wtf. I stand by my take that since Shane apologized for fleeing tuna melt, Ilya should have apologized for the club. He should have apologized for that right after. Then both of those events would be addressed, and both characters would have taken the vulnerability step of apologizing for something, thus admitting to each other that they care enough about each other to feel bad about hurting each other.
With some of these other examples you give, it is more of Tierney being bad with narrative continuity. The jump from the end of ep. 3 with Scott and Kip apart to the Skip kiss is something that, you know, as an audience, we have the means to invent something to fill in the blank. We can say oh they must have gotten back together at some point, for example, whatever. That seems to be what we were meant to take away from it, as I believe Francois was asked about this and he said something like to him it doesn't look like they were still broken up by that time or whatever but like, that's so insane to leave out lmao. Like when you think about it, it is so insane to dedicate a whole episode to them getting together and then breaking up, and this being like, a huge deal, the entier point of their story, only to leave the part where they get back together off screen. Like, if this show wasn't adapting books that would be an insane thing to choose not to include in the show.
But this is Tierney just not knowing how to create narrative continuity again. I mean, I think the fact that the skip episode is the skip episode, as in, an entire episode for skip lumped right in the middle of the Hollanov show, is kind of already like, a strong indication that Tierney struggles with narrative continuity. There are many ways Tierney could have incorporated Skip's story in the background of Hollanov's and spread it throughout those five episodes but that's a lot harder to do than to just shoehorn in a single episode dedicated to skip right in the middle so.
As for the two-year delay in them fucking, this wasn't all on Tierney. I've been told a couple of times that part of this was because of some tv censorship rule or law in Canada that prohibits the depiction of any characters under the age of 22 from having on-screen penetrative sex unless their actors look definitively older than 22 or something and because of that Tierney couldn't just have them fuck when they were nineteen like they should have. But he still didn't go about working around this rule in a way that works very well. I think it's clear we're meant to conclude they're not fucking during those two years, but I think a lot of people headcanon or speculate otherwise because it's just pretty stupid to ask us to buy that. Like, nobody really buys that Shane would reject Ilya that many times or put off anal for that long, especially when the last time they hooked up he was apparently ready to agree to it in just two weeks. It doesn't make any fucking sense and there are about 10 million different ways that Tierney could have found a way to work around the censorship law without hindering the story or characterizations of either Ilya or Shane.
I haven't read GC, so I can't comment on the book, but I hated Elena feeling like she had a right to pressure or criticize Scott too, and I hate that Tierney kept that in. I feel kind of betrayed by him keeping that in and then not even framing it any differently. I am so sick of this bullshit romanticization of "sunshine" that makes closeted queer people out to be paranoid cowards who are just needlessly scared to come out for some mysterious reason. It is so disappointing coming from Tierney. I just want to tell him he should know better. He should fucking know better.
As for the hr book and whether or not it does a better job of showing how Shane and Ilya are at the top: No. Lmao. Hockey is about as relevant in the book as the show. We get about as much context for their situation in the book as we do the show. Actually, the show probably does it better, but neither does enough to contextualize their situation for us at all.
tl;dr Reid is a bad writer and Tierney is a so-so writer. I suspect HR the book is much better than GC the book but that does not mean it's good. Do with that what you can I guess.
(reread this ask and I'm literally just rambling from here sorry)
i read it first a!d then i just finished tlg. i don't really expect anything from rr. i think she has ideas and concepts and executes them really poorly (why do we know little to nothing abt shane's japanese heritage? does he speak japanese? does he wish he spoke japanese? are there things he subconsciously thinks in japanese like spanish is my first language but now i mostly speak english, still when i think of food, home, sayings, its in spanish. and part of the reason i always think abt that is bc there is such an emphasis on ilya's russian and his struggle with expressing himself in a different language than his native tongue. its why him finding a therapist who speaks russian is so important. i don't think shane needs to speak japanese at all but for him to nearly never bring up his race is odd idk. like even him thinking about the fact that he doesn't think about it? or he doesn't worry about mom experiencing discrimination and racism? i don't often think abt myself experiencing those things im lucky to be in a decently diverse area but i always have my family on my mind and unfortunately racism does not go away regardless of tax bracket or citizenship status. so for shane to NEVER experience it is crazy)
i love troy sm. not as much as shane or ilya but i am unfortunately weak for an okay redemption story. i haven't read tough guy so i don't know how bad troy is and honestly reid doesn't go in to it. he's just sorta fixed with little to no work. (by this i mean he doesn't examine his biases or rarely has a moment where he thinks something wrong and has to redirect his thoughts towards something more positive). Still, troy starts the book at rock bottom and hes so miserable that i like him. he loses a lot and i think he and shane are similar in the way they live through hockey. in tlg, one of the conflicts that i wish was explored more was how shane gives so much of himself to hockey to point of almost self harm. his relationship to food was not great. (i don't know if its an eating disorder but listen im abt related to him so hard and i don't want to unpack) him restricting his diet to the point that he cannot eat one cookie is insane. the way i viewed it was a moment of control thing where he wants to believe that even though he cannot control the homophic hockey culture he's in, he can out work it by being the best. and his worry and resentment of ilya eating freely (read:poorly) and engaging in "vices" makes sense. firstly, shane LOVES hockey and he's good at it and he's willing to make "necessary sacrifices" to remain that way and he feels ilya isnt. i thought shane was also going through this thought of "if I'm good enough, if I'm irreplaceable for long enough they will accept me despite whatever homophobic racist thing they think". was disappointed to not see that explored at all.
i viewed both of them as using their crutches (for shane the very strict diet and for ilya smoking, eating poorly, and drinking) as forms of self harm. i thought that reid would address shane's need for control and how he expresses it through restrictive eating but she doesn't. at least with ilya we see that he's in a bad place but so is shane! it is horrific to be closeted in area where you don't feel safe. he handles it differently from ilya. i didn't think he was being overly selfish, i thought he was stressing and spiraling in a different way and resented ilya a little 'for not trying'. but narratively, ilya is given grace where shane isn't
though in reality, reid doesn't want to explore strong conflict or the themes she wrote. when shane speaks to and is threatened by crowell, we get a small glimpse of shane facing some discrimination but its only a hint. i don't hate ilya for being worried about being stuck in the closet but i hate that shane's fears are never dealt with! he loses so much! i don't think im as frustrated as others bc i am naivelely holding hope that in unrivaled shane's issues will be more front and center.
i like harris but in a sort of neutral positive way where i don't have strong opinions about him. he's sweet i guess.
Yeah I've spoken at length about the issues with Reid white-washing Shane. She has since said that she thinks Shane would know some Japanese, now that people have criticized her so much for not paying any attention to her race, but I don't trust her to understand or care about the heart of the criticism here, which is not simply that Shane never spoke Japanese in the books, but that she just didn't put any thought into his race at all and didn't make Shane aware of his race and have it affect his characterization or story at all.
I don't know that I would say Troy never reflects on his biases or has any moments in which he needs to redirect his thoughts. A number of times he wonders how he hadn't noticed what Kent was up to, and at one point he second guesses his choice to do the social media accounts and if it's actually the right thing or if it actually helps and he has to set himself straight. It's not much but I wouldn't say it's not there.
If you mean he never reflects on like, being queerphobic before, I would argue that's because textually, the way it's written, he doesn't really need to. He was never actually queerphobic, based on how it was written. It was only ever something he pretended to be. He doesn't have to unpack any internalized queerphobia. In real-life it's fair to argue that it's unlikely someone who was being queerphobic so overtly never actually believed in any of it, and it might be fair to criticize Reid for not having the guts to make Troy actually buy into some of it, but at the end of the day, she didn't. Troy technically was never queerphobic in the sense that he never actually believed in it.
I also wouldn't say he loses a lot. Not the way, for example, Shane does. Troy loses his team and his dad but this is not framed as narrative punishment. This is part of what makes Troy's story weak. It is difficult for his redemption arc to really mean anything if it never meant sacrificing something he wanted to keep and benefitted from having. His old team and his dad are not framed this way.
But, I think I get sort of the sentiment of the points you're making here, which is that Troy was redeemed too easily by the narrative, and he did go through some miserable shit.
As for Shane, it wasn't meant to be an eating disorder. Reid has said this multiple times. However, in real life, it absolutely would be. The way you're interpreting Shane is fair, and I think is how a lot of people who are empathetic to Shane view him. The problem is that the reason none of that was explored with Shane, his eating, his need to perfect, his effort to make himself irreplaceable to compensate for his race and sexuality - none of that was something Reid intentionally put in there. Reid gave Shane the diet she did to make him whiney and selfish and to give Ilya something to tease him about. It wasn't meant to say anything more about him. His dedication to his career was meant to depict how selfish and self-absorbed he is. We weren't meant to find anything about it empathetic. It's only because we care about Shane's character a lot more than Reid ever has that we can extrapolate more from these decisions Reid made than she intended to put in there.
I think it's fair to interpret Shane's diet as a form of self-harm, or Ilya's drinking and smoking as a form of self-harm (for reason I won't get into in this post, and in an effort to not be a bitch, I'll just say that I don't agree with viewing Ilya's eating as a form of self-harm personally), but Reid, again, undoubtedly didn't intend for Shane's diet to be viewed as a form of self-harm, nor does she see it that way herself.
Shane wasn't being selfish at all, and Shane wasn't allowed to be in a bad place. Throughout the entire book Shane has every reason to be as stressed and struggling as Ilya is even if he doesn't want to solve it the same way Ilya does but Reid made Shane "happy as can be" and acted like Shane had nothing to be upset for the entire book. Even in the end, when he loses everything, she doesn't allow Shane to grieve this. She doesn't allow him to be depressed about this. She intended for Shane to be the antagonist in this story, to be the one fucking up, to be the one wronging Ilya, and she didn't spare any empathy or care for his side of the story at all.
It's true Reid doesn't like conflict, even beside her disdain for Shane that made it so she didn't even really understand his conflict. She barely introduces conflict before she sweeps it away, usually in far to conveniently a manner. She wants to allude to serious issues in her writing but doesn't want to actually confront those issues, and often, it appears as though she doesn't really think there's anything that needs confronting, because she doesn't take those same serious issues very seriously.
And yeah, her treatment of queerphobia is a prime example of this. I mean, racism isn't even something she remotely attempts to address. She barely barely alludes to it even once when Shane is seeing the Commissioner, but otherwise, it is not even a acknowledged as something that exists. But with queerphobia, she does treat it as a paranoid delusion of queer people's that never actually impacts them outside of their own fear. I have bitched about how she treats the rivalry as a bigger obstacle to Shane and Ilya then them both being men a thousand times. It is one of the best examples of how she trivializes queerphobia, and it is literally the premise of the book.
You're being a lot more generous to her than I know how to be anymore lol. I don't have any faith in Unrivaled. I will read it before stating anything definitively about it, but I am not giving it any benefit of the doubt really.
okay i will stop running my mouth soon but. the vegas 2014 scene is actually one of the worst things ever TO ME PERSONALLY
like,,,,, id hate to be a prude but i found it so unsexy and unfun and uncomfortable. AND I KNOW. i know that was point, i just feel like there's a weird double standard on Shane because why is he getting tossed around and treated that way and very clearly upset by it but it's FINE but when he leaves after freaking out with the tuna melts he gets grief forever?..??.....??????
okay i am aware it's not the same situation right it's objectively not but. as a mixed woman i was just personally uncomfortable with watching a poc character be put in such a vulnerable position and rather than be taken genuinely seriously have it played as a sad moment of yearning and pining about the white man's headspace and trauma and family and whatever else
like. intent sometimes does not matter as much as we'd like it to and i fear that had that happened irl to any friend of mine, i would've ripped that man's head off myself (AND I KNOW. I KNOWWWW THEY'RE NOT REAL just engage with me at face value ok)
meanwhile tuna melts happen and ilya rozanov is The Victim Of All Time and. again i understand the stakes are different and im not saying ilya was a terrible person for what happened in vegas im just saying im TIRED of the romanticization and minimization of POC (specifically east asian) victimhood while it's directly in juxtaposition with white validation
i am not saying racial bias is at play here but considering the broader context of the Everything Else in this series i absolutely am
EXTREMELY funny universe possibility in which ilya in tuna melt was just a liiiittle further along in being ready to consciously think of shane as more than a hook-up (not ready to admit to it being love yet, but he can admit to himself "yes, it's different and more fun and better with you, more than anyone else, and i would like to have more of that"), and then tuna melt doesn't happen because ilya is just a little too overwhelmed to say anything, which means that it ends with shane staying all night and ilya getting to experience sleeping next to him and waking up the next morning next to him. and it's. yeah. he wants this always. he will NOT say that.
but.
he does throw out what HE thinks is a statement about them maybe being more than hookups and would shane want to do that. but he couches it in SO much protective language so he can "haha got you" if shane reacts badly that shane doesn't. actually. catch what he meant.
so what ilya was saying was, "hey, what if we tried out being just a little bit more than casual? i like being with you, and last night was really fun. maybe we see if we can have that more often?" with an overture of like. maybe friends with benefits. because he's not ready to admit to himself or shane that he wants to be dating-dating, but he and svetlana are best friends who fuck. he and shane could also be friends who fuck. and it's definitely FRIENDSHIP he feels for shane. just friendship. and if it's friendship that's maybe dating a little bit, well...do you wanna?
but what SHANE got out of this is, "it was fun to stay over, and the morning sex was really great. do you want to start staying over with each other when we can so we can do it again?" and the First Name Fiasco didn't happen, and shane's had a little time to settle into this new level in a way that's made it pretty comfortable, and he LOVES clear plans. how nice. :) we can make this agreement now and not have to discuss it each time in the future. :) now he'll know exactly what to expect each time. :) his very casual fuckbuddy will just stay over, and he'll stay over at his place, and now they've made this plan very clear. :)
(jesus christ, shane)
and emboldened by shane being so amiable in his agreement, ilya hits him with a, "see you in the rink, shane," as he's leaving, and shane *surprise blink* as he processes, but before he can freak out, ilya finds his expression so cute that he HAS to tease him, so hits him with a, "sorry you're about to lose, but at least you had a good night before, yes?" and oh you MOTHERFUCKER >:). okay. first name is just part of the teasing. alright. "in your fucking dreams, ilya." and what shane means is "you wanna play mind games, i'll play mind games, pal" but what ilya got was "yeah, i'm moving with you here and first names are good now."
so moving forward, ilya bit by bit settles into them dating (and yes, with time, it is accurate to call it that). and HE thinks shane is operating under the same, "let's see if we can be something more together" exploration, so he assumes that shane going along with it. and from shane's pov, ilya is suddenly texting a lot and using his first name, and it's really nice, but kind of confusing, but also he had that upsetting call about his dad?? so maybe stuff is just hard at home and he just needs a friend?? and he doesn't know if they're friends, per se, but maybe shane is just a safe place to have other secrets live, too?? what's "hey, i'm having a hard time with my family and just need someone to send dumb memes back and forth with" between two ultra-secret fuckbuddies, after all?
and rose does enter the picture at some point, but things with ilya are good, and he does like rose and part of him wonders if he should try out dating her, but even if he and ilya aren't A Thing...it's really nice with him right now. and shane knows that dating someone else would mean giving it up because he wouldn't feel right fucking around and cheating. so he and rose do end up becoming friends (and because they text regularly, shane even sends ilya a text that night of, "I think I'm friends with a celebrity now?? do I get cool points for that??" and gets a "no, you get cool points for nothing ever. you are too uncool. you are uncool black hole where cool points go to die." "okay, fuck you. i was going to ask if you wanted anyone's autograph, but just for that, fuck you, asshole. 🖕" "what if i want yours?" "why do you want mine?" "you are my favorite celebrity. ❤️" "i thought i was boring." "yes, you are famous for how boring you are. is really quite impressive." *devolution into sexting and then video calling for sex*), but that's it.
until rose increasingly sees shane smiling at his phone when they're hanging out and manages to teasingly coax it out of him by dropping hints and comments and finally just going, "you don't have to tell me, but if it's because she's actually a he, that's okay, shane." so shane has his realization of yes he's gay, and also yes, he's in love with ilya. and obviously he and ilya have never really had a conversation about it (jesus christ, shane), but maybe?? he would be interested?? they get along really well and shane likes being with him, and they know by now that they're really good sharing space and being together. and you know what? fuck it. he's going to be brave and do it. he's going to ask ilya if he wants to try dating each other.
...to which ilya, after being asked this, just, "...??!! what did YOU think we've been doing this whole fucking time????"
my GOD when they meet shane's parents together as a couple in this verse it's on purpose and not a surprise, and they get the "how long have you two been together?" question and ilya just *heavy sigh and cheers'ing his glass of vodka before taking a sip* "we will need calculator and scratch paper for-" *sounds of ilya getting beat over the head with a couch pillow because this is NOT the time to run this bit again*
fucking CACKLING imagining the emotional whiplash of shane's "i want us to try dating" conversation for ilya
he walks in, knows immediately that shane is nervous about something, and then shane hits him with a, "i wanna have a talk about something i've been thinking about," and ilya internally is just feeling a little sick because is this a breakup?? why??? what did he do??? things have felt SO good between them???? but externally he's just "okay"
and then shane proceeds in this talk about how things have felt different (ilya: ??? did he miss something??? things have felt so good??) and he thinks ilya has felt that way, too, ("shane, i haven't-") no, no, let him finish, please. he knows this started out as just casual, but it doesn't feel casual anymore. (...???? uh...yeah???) and would ilya maybe want to be something more? if they could? (..i-is this?? about to be a proposal???? "well, yes...") really?? would you maybe even want to-want to be...exclusive? ("you think i haven't been exclusive with you?") well, you have a reputation, and it's not that shane judges you for that but- ("i'm your boyfriend, and you think i would cheat on you??") ...
what a beautiful sentiment :) i am sure he will manage to express all of this very clearly :) and in a way that definitely won't lead to a multiple-month confusion :)
i do love and respect the idea of the world at large being stunned at finding out how long ilya and shane have been together, but i truly think that under NO circumstances would shane ever choose to offer ANY personal details about himself or their relationship willingly.
which combined with ilya loving just making things up and saying them (as seen in the "yes, the rumors are true-" scene) offers the very funny idea that ilya actively tries to offer as much privacy as possible by just throwing out stories about them at random so there IS no central story for people to hound shane about.
assorted backstories a la "ilya just started talking and found out with everyone else where he was going with this":
they got snowed in at all stars one year (b-but wasn't that year in florida?) and decided there was nothing better to do
it started as a bit and neither is willing to give up first
they paired off to combine forces like nato
they paired off to limit how many kids they could have in the future to make sure hockey stayed fair
ilya lost a bet six years ago
shane lost a bet three years ago
ilya got tired of remembering phone numbers for his hookups and shane's is easy
ilya got tired of having to look things up in english and french when talking to other people and decide to marry someone who speaks two languages to save time
shane is gifted enough (wink wink wink) that other people are cowards and only ilya was brave enough to rise to the challenge (this one gets him in trouble on the phone later but it also gets him laid that night at home and also confuses the online speculation about who tops and bottoms, so net positive tbh)
yuna hollander is the best manager in the business and a political marriage was the best way to secure her services longterm
with the end result that all shane has to do is shrug and "my husband has already told our story a thousand times by this point. no point in repeating it and boring people." in interviews to get out of people trying to dig into things he doesn't want to tell them.
Wes proposed. Amanda said yes. Lili is thrilled and so are their friends and family.
Amanda's ex-husband and his wife are less so. They already thought that three was a crowd and apparently four is entirely too many. What will they be willing to do to prevent Wes from joining their family?
Chapter 8 is now up.
Read on Ao3 or below the cut.
They have one very important piece of information.
The mastermind behind this entire fiasco is Ibolya Vass, heiress to a massive business empire.
Which unfortunately explains the connections involved and the cajones to frame and murder Jakob Tomasiak.
Unfortunately, the Vass family has properties in over a dozen countries.
Wes may not even still be in Poland.
Even if they can prove that Ibolya is behind his kidnapping – and Amanda being able to identify her voice from the phone call won’t be enough against the kind of lawyers the family has – it’s going to be difficult to determine where he’s being held.
Trawling through corporate documents and finances for the smoking gun could take weeks, if not months.
They don’t have much leverage to convince her to reveal it.
And Wes would be dead within hours if they arrested her.
Amanda could probably come up with leverage on Laszlo given what she knows about his habits and even Zoe has revealed more than she probably thinks but she isn’t even sure they are involved.
So they have to keep trying to trace the abduction in Poland.
Smitty and Riley had arrested a junior staffer at the Embassy after he was identified from footage at the police station.
Edward Jannson hasn’t denied that he picked Wes up and once a lab had confirmed that the orders he’d presented were a forgery, he’d quickly confessed to everything.
He doesn’t know much.
He’d signed out a staff car, picked up a woman with a dark colored handkerchief covering her hair and dark, large frame glasses obscuring her face and headed to the police station.
Upon arrival, he’d walked into the station and presented his paperwork.
The Polish police hadn’t been happy but in the face of a custody transfer form they’d believed to be real, they’d cuffed Wes for transport and walked him out to put him in the backseat of the staff car themselves, leaving Edward to simply climb behind the wheel and drive away.
He’d dropped them off in Imielin on a tired old road near a long-term airport parking lot, helping another man carry a now unconscious Wes to another vehicle.
Then he’d taken the staff car back to the Embassy and gone back to work.
And received a shit ton of money.
The hotel where he’d picked up Ibolya is high priced and ‘values their client’s privacy’.
There are no cameras where the pick up had been made, a private entrance for their most exclusive clientele.
Mostly allowing rich men to bring prostitutes up to their rooms without being documented but also helping kidnappers avoid identification.
The hotel won’t release data from the keycard reader that allows guests to use the door or their booking information.
A judge has ruled the testimony of a confessed criminal insufficient to compel it’s release.
It probably wouldn’t matter anyway.
Odds are that Ibolya’s room had been booked under a false name and paid for through shell companies anyway.
Amanda can’t even find proof of the woman entering the country.
On the other end of the transfer is a dirt road just out of site of hundreds of nearby security cameras in the parking lot, a vehicle they can’t trace and a man they can’t identify.
Because Edward couldn’t provide any better description than a gray sedan and a man of average height, stocky build, black hair and blue eyes.
The location is close to an airfield (hence the long term parking) and a major highway interchange where they could have very quickly disappeared in any number of directions.
So functionally, they have nothing.
Amanda is fairly confident that they hadn’t entered the airport based on the high prevalence of cameras there but beyond that they could have gone anywhere.
It’s been twelve hours since she’d gotten that call and other than chasing the few leads they had to dead ends, they haven’t gotten anywhere.
She has a meeting with her lawyer in about an hour to discuss the paperwork.
She won’t be signing or filing it – much as she loves Wes, she loves her daughter more and knows that he understands – but she’s realizing that buying some extra time is going to be essential.
She only hopes that it will be enough.
Because right now, it doesn’t feel like it.
Ibolya sits in a garden patio, sipping at her tea and scanning the vista.
She’s been traveling the world her entire life and it’s rare that a view impresses her anymore.
Grandeur, the whole world laid out beneath her, was the norm before she could even walk.
The first time her father had rented out this castle for the family, she’d still been a toddler.
It’s been an annual visit the last several years.
Two weeks in early May before it opens for thousands of daily tourists.
Most would balk at the fee to get the owners to prepare it earlier and allow them exclusive use, not to mention she has to provide her own staff and pay a deposit in case of any damage caused during their stay
But the money is a drop in the ocean for the chance to imagine herself as true royalty for a few weeks each year.
To sit in the throne room and imagine people bowing before her the way that she deserves.
Society has come a long way since these castles were being constructed but she personally thinks that’s something that shouldn’t have been lost.
Or at least reduced to a ceremonial farce reserved for royals who’ve long forgotten the importance of their station.
Her assistant bows each time he walks into her office.
People avert their eyes and dip their heads when she walks through the halls.
Because she is their boss and she demands it.
It should be the same everywhere she goes.
She should have a dungeon where she can lock up any one who annoys her without the secrecy that’s been required to spirit Wes Mitchell away from the Polish police and across international borders.
Leveraging the man against his adulterous lover shouldn’t come with a -albeit small – risk that his friends will be able to track them to Maincy, France.
She takes another sip of her tea and feels her lips twisting in a smirk.
It’s also too bad she can’t chain him to a cart and parade him through the streets of the nearby town in penance for his crimes.
She’ll have to resort to some of the other medieval torments that are available to her.
Wes proposed. Amanda said yes. Lili is thrilled and so are their friends and family.
Amanda's ex-husband and his wife are less so. They already thought that three was a crowd and apparently four is entirely too many. What will they be willing to do to prevent Wes from joining their family?
Chapter 7 is now up.
Read on Ao3 or below the cut.
Amanda Tate is a professional.
She won’t fall to pieces just because her fiance is missing.
Because he’s been kidnapped in a scheme that shows a terrifying depth of planning, preparation and reach.
The reach being the part that scares her the most.
Wes doesn’t have any ties to Poland so whoever is behind this had interacted with him and formed their grudge in either Hungary or somewhere in the United States.
But they’d chosen to go after him in Poland.
Chosen to set up the son of an important Polish government official as a suspect in the investigation they’d set up to lure him there.
Chosen to kill that son with apparently no worries of consequences.
Have some kind of link in the US Embassy in Poland to be able to forge believable orders for him to be transferred from Polish police custody to that of the Embassy.
It worries her how much that reach will help them stay out of the way of the team’s investigation.
It had taken about thirty seconds for facial recognition to pull up the name of the man who’d waltzed into the station to pick him up.
But it had taken a couple of hours for Smitty and Andre to track him down and pick him up for questioning.
And he’s not talking.
She’s digging into his background in an attempt to find some kind of leverage to encourage him to tell them what he knows.
She’s distracted when her phone rings and pulls it from her pocket, answering it without looking at the screen.
“Hello?”
““Manda.”
She sits straight up, computer forgotten entirely in the wake of the adrenaline that floods her at the sound of Wes’s choked, scared voice.
“Don’ do’t.” he continues.
Something is very wrong.
He’s … in pain or fighting to breathe… maybe both.
She isn’t quite sure.
“Wes?” she demands. “Baby, are you alright?”
“He’s fine.” an all too familiar voice cuts over his choked, breathy ‘fine’.
“What do you want?”
This is about her.
Has something to do with her ex-husband and the messed up family that he’s married into.
But if her ex’s new mother-in-law doesn’t realize that Amanda might recognize her voice, she won’t give up that advantage so quickly.
“You will contact your lawyers.” Ibolya says. “Make arrangements to hand over full custody of your daughter to her father. To terminate your parental rights.”
“What?” she gasps. “No. I can’t.”
“You will.” Ibolya says smugly. “Or your little side piece – the boy that you betrayed a good man for – will pay the price.”
A good man? Betrayed?
She and Laszlo had been divorced for years by the time she ever even met Wes Mitchell.
It’s not betraying him to move on with her life like he’d moved on with his.
Not to mention that Wes has more man in his little finger than Laszlo has in his entire body.
“It will take time.” she says.
“Then I suggest you get to work.” Ibolya says. “You have seventy two hours.”
The call ends.
She glances down at her computer where the trace that she’d started almost entirely by instinct after hearing Wes’s voice has gone still.
With no answers.
The signal was scrambled and redirected through countless satellites.
Their program is pretty advanced, one of the best, and if Ibolya had stayed on the line a little bit longer, it would have gotten a location.
As it is, she’s got nothing.
Nothing but a name.
A name with just as much reach as she’d been afraid of.
They re-chain his hands above his head after the call is over but don’t remove the zip tie.
If he was even half as dramatic as Miss. Edwin and half of his foster parents had always claimed, he would say that he can’t breathe.
But he’s actually been minimizing injuries since before he could talk.
He can breathe.
It hurts and his oxygen supply is restricted but he’ll be okay.
The true worry is that Ibolya had given Amanda seventy two hours to comply with their demands.
A long window means at least one ‘reminder’ that these people are serious if not more.
If they’re starting this off by restricting his breathing, who knows where they’ll escalate to before everything is said and done.
But they need him alive to get what they want and what they’re asking for will take time.
Ibolya has to be prepared to give Amanda an extension as long as she can prove that progress is being made.
They only have him as leverage.
They can’t afford to throw that away at the first deadline.
They also can’t offer that extension lightly.
It won’t be with his life but he will pay the price for a failure to meet the deadline.
So at least he can count on them to keep him in good enough shape to survive whatever that’s going to be.
He shifts around, trying to take some of the weight off his wrists.
The ache was bad enough when it was just the heavy metal digging in and bruising them.
Now the full weight of his arms is pulling down on them and the only alternative is consciously lifting them up and that’s going to get exhausting very quickly.
He drops his head back against the wall behind him, taking a shaky breath.
Hudson Williams: Shane Hollander understander of all times
"I fell in love with Shane immediately. I mean, I was falling in love with him even when I read the sides, which were just the audition... like, two scenes I got for the audition. By the time I finished reading episode 6, I was crying. I felt like no one else was allowed to play him. I needed to play him."
"Shane is very affable, even though he's sort of a departure from myself. As much anxiety as I have, Shane has quadruple, tenfold more, and it's just pouring out of him at all times. And that was fun to play, even if sometimes my stomach hurt. I always thought of him as sort of this pretty, neurotic character; this little concoction of this flowery, determined, sort of alpha in some ways, or sort of wanting to appear so, and then just this pretty little sensitive painting in other ways."
"I had Heated Rivalry read, and then read again, and annotated many times, on my Kindle."
"After reading Jacob's scripts, even before the book, I immediately saw how he would operate. My dad is on the spectrum, he knows it. He's a mechanical engineer graduated top of his class, first in class in everything, very technical genius in a lot of ways, but sort of socially... I think he would say that he doesn't want to deal with emotions. He has told me, I'm not even paraphrasing, "I relate more with Vulcan than human," referencing the Star Trek, the hyper-cerebral alien creatures. I love my dad to death, and I've always felt very connected to him. He has a sensitivity to him that is very boyish. I think when I read the script, I took a huge page out of living my life with him. Rachel Reid has said Shanel is autistic, so I think I knew how it should look. I empathized with him a lot immediately."
"Shane is hyper competent at this one thing. He's stereotypically masculine in a lot of regards. He's a kind person, and he's so overtly Canadian. He's harboring something that he thinks is a career-ending secret because he just doesn't have the emotional maturity or societal maturity to sort of understand what his own queerness means. To him, it's most likely detrimental, which is the wrong assumption to some degree, but it shatters his own idea of what his masculinity is, or at least it cripples it. And yet, he still never harms a fly."
"Shane is like a giant wooden suit with not too many articulating joints. I love him dearly, but he is exhausting because although it's my accent to a degree, it's not my voice. I'm very expressive, I'm loud, and he is tight-lipped and tight-throated, and he walks like a little frickin' square. He's like a Roomba, and has the emotional expression of one as well. So it's exhausting, but the friction is also sort of liberating in a sense that I can just be very sardonic and not necessarily earnest all the time. I'm trying to work at that. Even if Shane just says "you're an asshole" or "fuck you," his heart is on his sleeve no matter what. It's just pure earnestness and a real lack of ability to articulate himself into a lie or a less truthful place. His heart is always in his eyes, and that is kind of refreshing to be in, but it's also scary."
"Sometimes I think people might not like him, but it's like, "Oh, I hope people understand him." This is someone who's very close to me. These are family members. These are friends. These are neurodivergent people I know very well. So I'm also scared for him because a lot of the time I'm like, do I make him more cinematic and more sellable and more of a charismatic performance? Shane is not charismatic. There's a wardrobe person on set who said, "Hudson, you're hot as hell, but Shane's unfuckable." And I was like, "Well, yeah, I guess that's Shane."
"Shane feels very much like my father in a lot of ways. Thinking of him while playing Shane, that was a part of the build, the very first ingredients. I think I said my dad has a boyish quality, but he's also mechanical. Shane is boyish, but he's also mechanical. Getting to live with that, be frustrated by that, be frustrated by the restrictions of it, it just made me feel even more empathy and love for my dad."
"To cry in someone's arms is possibly the most intimate thing I think a human can do, let alone bare your heart on your sleeve and have to look someone in the eye. It's terrifying for me, and I'm an actor and my job is to be some soapy bitch. But for Shane, it is like death."
"Shane is not the most observant fella. He doesn't even have a gaydar. So I think Scott was someone he admired and represents the guy who's done it and been in the league-macho, competent. And to see that guy kissing smoothie boy on screen in front of millions of watchers is like a little pressure off his shoulders of going, "Okay, this makes this a little less scary. I'm not sure I'm going to do that, but I'm glad someone did."
"Shane's on the spectrum so he has to be specific."
"And then also the scene where, it's very sweet, when Shane mentions that they can start a mental health organization. I don't think Shane knows how sweet that is to Ilya. I think it kind of comes from Shane's pragmatism and he's sort of thinking, well, this was good and Ilya will appreciate this, but I don't think he knows to the extent."
"And then the final nail through the fucking skull in my eyes was the scene with Yuna. That was the scene that felt the most pointed in my upbringing. You know, Asian family... There were some stereotypes that are true, in my experience and a lot of Asian kids' reality. Perfection, discipline, a lack of straying left and right meant a lot of old, outdated conventions and old biases. Being gay is one of them. So having that release... I didn't know at that point if Yuna would tell him, "Okay, well, do you want to be a part of this family or not? You're not going to be talking about that again." To the degree of which she brought him in and said, "That's okay," really just sent me."
"Shane and Ilya get their ending, but as a reader bringing in my own experience of what that sort of overbearing mother means and the fears that it comes along with, this is the looming anxiety that carries Shane through all those seasons, all those years. "What would my mom think? What would my dad think? Holy fuck, I am breaking their idea of this perfect little image of a hockey player I have built over these years and sort of fabricated, to a degree."
"No, Shane does not know he's autistic. Although autism has always existed, the idea of it being a spectrum... that conversation started to reach me in a more open, accepted way in like 2017, 2018. I kind of forget the exact dates of when our show wraps up, but the overlap would probably be nearing the end of where we leave them in Heated Rivalry And I don't think Shane would be having those conversations in his social circles."
"He would need to go to a therapist, and Ilya is the only one in therapy in season two. And I don't think either of Shane's parents are the type to be like, "There's a spectrum. You're on it." They just think he's driven and antisocial. To me, reading the scripts, it didn't even have to be acknowledged. I was like, "This guy is farther along the spectrum than a lot of people." And I kind of aw, even how the dialog was written, how it manifests. Sometimes autism's portrayed in movies with quirky head movements, weird blinks, and weird inflections. And it's like, Okay...? That is sometimes truthful but that's always the reach. That's always the way it's expressed. And it's like, No, sometimes it is flat affect. It's just being immobile in your seat and taking 10 seconds to move your hand to do something because you don't know what this movement looks like or means."
"Shane is not a talker. In our show, he talks very little, and so we need to kind of set that up. Even Shane just coming up to him and saying, "Ilya Rozanov?" is huge, and it needs to be huge for the rest of the show."
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