Dream, you will fully bloom after all the hardships

[gaynehollander]

Ilya so immediately clocked Shane's little autistic flirting in that Saskatchewan parking lot but I honestly don't think Shane clocked it himself so, years later, when Ilya talks about it as "Shane coming onto him" and Shane goes "hello??? I just wanted to introduce myself??" Ilya just says, "Shane, the apple of my eye, the light of my life, my breeze in a stuffy room, my sunshine in the dead of winter, when have you ever willingly initiated small talk with another person?" and Shane is forced to concede that, yes, looking back, he was flirting.

[chachi-baby]

I like to imagine Rose’s brothers gave her shit for not sticking it out with Shane Hollander long enough for him to meet the family then when they find out it’s because Shane is gay they give her shit for not passing him along to one of them and she’s like??? you’re not gay??? to which they’re like !!!! everyone’s gay for Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov ain’t special

[wtf-is-hockey]

Rachel is anti-asian. There is no other explanation. Let's pretend Shane is not autistic and Shane does not have any eating disorder. How much she hates Shane and how she talks about Shane in comparison to her white character Ilya? She is just anti-asian.

Even if it was not her intention, that's on her for making Shane half-japanese to festishize bottom gay character using east asian stereotype.

I do think that this is the impetus for every single thing you could criticize her for with regard to Shane. Everything begins with him not being white, and her not viewing him as deserving of empathy.

[wtf-is-hockey]

I think one of the things that happened between heated rivalry and tlg regarding Shane was her realizing she had written him as autistic in the first book, and went into the second thinking he is (and she doesn’t like it). and that’s why the autism rep was a lot better in the first book. in the first book he missed social cues sometimes, but in tlg he needs things spelled out to him word for word. in hr he asks clarifying questions when Ilya’s emotionally vulnerable with him, in tlg he sees the messages with Ilya’s “last words” and apparently thinks it’s weird. and it’s so damaging! and this is only the autism part of Shane’s character, there’s so much more to him that she doesn’t like/hates

Yeah I think that happened for sure. I also think what happened was fans wanted a sequel and she didn't have a sequel planned, and she scrambled for the first plot she could think of - and that plot, because it was the first thing she came up with on a whim, brought out all of her worst biases. I think that's why the plot is just GC recycled even though it couldn't make less sense for Hollanov, and I think that's what led to such an extremely visible unempathetic view of Shane. Because like, I didn't get the impression she hated Shane in HR. She didn't develop him as fully, she ignored his race, she wasn't as interested in him - but the book wasn't filled with disdain for him the way tlg is. And so I think she settled on her one queer traps the other in the closet go-to trope, and as soon as she did that, Shane was doomed.

[wtf-is-hockey]

Can I be honest? I honestly thought Shane fans were a bit harsh on Rachel Reid and some stuff is just misunderstanding or she jokes and its not landing but seeing it all laid out like that - she does seem resentful and like she harbours some dislike of his character? thats also how I understood the comments about ilya ending up with Svetlana. Like Shane - especially tv show Shane - is becoming unappealing to her and everything about him is now viewed through a negativ lense. and thats why she is starting to consider Ilya with someone else. She doesnt like him anymore so the Ilya in her head doesnt either

Yeah and I can tell from reading Role Model too that she has an extremely hard time making her character convincingly love another character that she doesn’t also love. If she can’t see the appeal, neither can her character, at least not fully.

I was going to say I’m glad you’re reassessing your pov of her, but honestly, none of this makes me glad at all. It is so depressing. I would have much rather have been wrong and just a spiteful jealous bitch. But I guess if she is going to insist on being awful, then it is good you and others are seeing exactly how awful now.

[inspireland]

is it a good time to point out that her disdain for Shane clearly trickles into how she talks about Hudson?

because she's made some comments in the past that felt like microaggressions (together with JT) and people called that out and were silenced because "you're being parasocial! these people are friends and joke about each other!"

and when people pointed out that they may be joking, but saying this stuff publicly in the context of the racist attacks Hudson has been receiving for months is AT LEAST a horrible look optics-wise, if not intentionally malicious, and it only made the racists feel welcomed in their prejudices, so an environment filled with white people needed some diversity training to know how to handle having a poc actor as a lead

and people were silenced AGAIN (and then the Peabody award announcement mess happened, because of course it did)

and now i can't avoid seeing how similar the way she talks about Shane, a character she accidentally made neurodivergent, to the way she talks about Hudson, a neurodivergent man who brought his knowledge of his dad's autism in how he portrayed Shane's autism

it's just a mess all around

[neilabrm]

i know her regretting making shane autistic is before the reddit q&a so before the show, but man this all just makes you think whether her apparent change of heart and embracing of shane's autism is due to her really seeing the importance of it or just her trying to backtrack in panic when it suddenly became a more popular and loved part of the show than she thought. like it's hard to say at this point whether she's genuine or not?

[limeekak]

I just can't understand how this and the ED part could be "a big regret"… if it really happened without any intention, what's so hard about doing some research and portraying it in the story in a minimally decent way? yk you're a writer, that's your job…

[liminalmess]

one more thing sorry you can filter the “anti Rachel Reid” tag below if you don’t want to see it but im still mad

the concept of being stressed by getting the huge undertaking of a charity and hockey school off the ground and take it seriously being selfish

the concept of dealing with what is clearly a developing eating disorder being selfish

the concept of the stress and fear of always having to worry about being outed and possibly losing your career and everything you’ve worked (double hard btw bc you’re a poc) so hard for being selfish

if you think any of this is selfish get help honestly

[holyshitroz]

An eating disorder is not a fucking Character Flaw!!!!! It’s a fucking disorder?!?!

You don’t seek treatment for an eating disorder to become a Better Person!!! People with eating disorders aren’t Bad People™️!??

[softshane]

please let‘s remember that criticising rachel reid doesn’t automatically make you misogynistic. just because she’s a woman doesn’t mean she’s immune to criticism. and we’re criticising her for how she constantly belittles, dismisses and outright hates her autistic character of colour.

rachel saying that she regrets suggesting that shane may be autistic while currently partnering with an autism charity where you can bid on a 30 minute call with her is worthy of calling out. rachel saying that ilya should have gone for svetlana in the show and that there will be ilya/svetlana fics when the book and show wouldn’t nearly be anywhere near as successful without shane since we’re all here only because of how much we love shane and ilya is worthy of calling out. rachel saying that his diet - which is not ridiculous, let me be clear here - is another thing shane focuses on too much instead of actually important things like his very sad boyfriend is worthy of calling out. shane clearly has an eating disorder which is constantly belittled and dismissed by everyone around him but his issues are never taken seriously and properly addressed because he is a side character in his own book, a mere plot device to tell ilya‘s story. rachel saying that she wanted shane to tell jj and then following up with shane is stupid as if she isn’t the author and could have easily written the scene differently is worthy of calling out. rachel saying that shane‘s reaction to ilya‘s texts in tlg would be huh weird, followed by her calling shane an idiot is worthy of calling out because anyone who understands shane‘s character would know that this is most definitely not how he would react; he would know something‘s up and be concerned because he‘s been clocking ilya‘s depression all of tlg. rachel saying that tlg was all about the ways shane had been selfish and essentially putting the entire blame for the conflicts in tlg on him when ilya had also been selfish is worthy of calling out (and this isn’t to pit them against each other but merely to acknowledge that they both are flawed and fuck up and that’s okay - i love them both dearly). rachel doubling down on shane not having trauma when he’s a neurodivergent closeted gay man of colour playing a sport that’s known for its racism and homophobia, but because he didn’t have an abusive family, he couldn’t possibly carry trauma is worthy of calling out. rachel refusing to understand her own character because she clearly can’t be bothered and only cares about ilya is worthy of calling out.

yes, shane isn’t perfect but her treatment of and outright hatred for her own character is completely unjustified. again, the story doesn’t work without shane. we all wouldn’t be here without shane. he’s such a beloved character, and i simply cannot fathom creating such a complex, nuanced character seemingly by accident, only to completely misunderstand him and complain about his actions that you wrote.

I will continue calling rachel reid out for shit like this until she takes accountability and shows an ounce of willingness to learn from the criticism we offer. and these are all valid criticisms that have nothing to do with her being a woman. but if that still makes me a misogynist in your eyes, cool. I don’t give a fuck. I love Shane, and he deserves so much better.

[vegasfish]

I think that what many people don't understand is how micro-aggressive Rachel Reid comes across whenever she discusses Shane Hollander. I don't think anyone should be attacking her for irrelevant things (e.g., her gender or her fucking Parkinson's), but we have to call out the contrast in how she talks about Ilya and Shane on a micro aggressive level. Because there is no way his "ridiculous performance enhancement EATING DISORDER" is immediately trumped by his European, depressed boyfriend. Rachel Reid, arguably, does not know the character she created.

Let me be clear. I am well aware that she is the original author of the Game Changers universe and therefore Heated Rivalry. I am aware that, regardless, Shane Hollander is her character, so at the end of the day, nothing she writes is out of character. I think that she, however, is unaware of exactly the world she is having her gay, half-asian character exist in and how exactly he and the rest of the world would interact with each other. Shane Hollander is in a straight, white dominated sport as a gay, non-white person, and just the non-white part brings for a very brutal experience. At the end of the day, this is a romance-erotica and I'm not going to expect the world's best hockey commentary, but it's clear she has the capacity to go over serious issues like depression, sexual self-medication, etc. because that's what she as a white woman has the capacity to do.

So, no, I don't think she fully gets Shane because she has a fundamentally different experience of life as a white woman. That's that—she, in all cases, never will fully understand what she's putting out into the world. All of her very, very weird (and apathetic) takes on Shane Hollander show such a thing. All in all, we just have to sigh and understand that this is not the kind of story she's equipped to tell, but also point out and critique how her language (in the books or online) in regards to Shane Hollander can read as micro-aggressive whether she means it to or not. Perhaps this will change and be adapted in Unrivaled, and perhaps it won't.

[thenameisgul]

As a Canadian poc, trust me when I say, RR is a very typical nice Canadian white woman who’s reacting with passive aggressiveness because we dared to call out her micro-aggressions against Shane.

This is her going ‘I was so nice to you and this character but you called me racist so I’ll show you racist now!’

[enby-axels]

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?

it's racism all the way down guys

[wtf-is-hockey]

New stupidest argument I’m seeing is “But Shane IS selfish” and setting aside the fact that actually when you look at what he does that’s “selfish” in tlg it’s obviously extremely biased against him, it’s like oh my God do you not understand that Shane Does Not Exist. Shane Is Not Real. Shane Does Not Have Autonomy. Like let’s say for a moment Shane IS selfish, and let’s say this is a universally agreed-upon interpretation. Do you not understand that he is then selfish because Reid made him selfish, and her choice to make him selfish, especially when taking into consideration what actions of his she is using to frame him as selfish, is fair to consider the implications of and criticize? It’s giving “Yeah but these fictional female characters written by a male author CHOSE to dress that way!” Oh my God.

[sharkvampire]

being an autistic person who relates to Shane Hollander is not so fun when the literal author thinks he’s weird, stupid, selfish and self-centred because.. ?

[wtf-is-hockey]

i'm honestly really baffled by Reid's comments on Shane's ostensible eating disorder. i mean for her to address it (& shane generally) with such disdain was not shocking, but i feel like a little bit of a surprise based on some of the ways she wrote the ED into canon.

i interpreted her comment to mean that her thought process was "show that shane will dedicate so much time to ultimately dumb useless minutae in his pursuit of perfection that it completely overrides his care for ilya a.ka. ballad of the self absorbed selfish boyfriend"

and with that looking back on certain scenes from TLG (shane kissing ilya for a taste of lemonade, his internal monolugue about wanting a cookie ect) i can't even comprehend how they coeexist

i mean you wrote those scenes rachel !! i think the lemonade one is prticularly devastating for me, how could she have written that and still come away thinking that the problem in that moment was shane's self-absorbtion

I see a lot of people in the fandom right now who are struggling with this, like, "How could she say that about his eating disorder?" Well, she can say that about his eating disorder because to her it isn't an eating disorder.

That is headcanon, and popular fanon. Reid has made it clear repeatedly that she still does not view it as an eating disorder. Nothing will convince her it is one. And frankly, I'm kind of relieved it wasn't intended, because if it was intended, her choice to essentially cure it with a candy bar and a shrug would be a thousand times more offensive than it already is.

But the point is, to Reid, Shane is just a high-maintenance superficial bitch who cares more about his figure than his boyfriend. That's how she's able to do it. She, like majority of people, is so deeply emersed in diet culture that she can't recognize it for what it is. The reason the fandom doesn't see it that way is in part because they know more about disordered eating than she does, and in part because they are capable of empathizing with Shane even though Reid can't.

And this is a very important fact to remember when criticizing her both for how she wrote it and for everything she says about it. The conclusion we should draw, of course, is still that she is being wildly insensitive about the subject and actively disdainful toward Shane - but it is in a different way than most people are realizing.

[highlysusceptibletodisaster]

AND YOU GUYS WERE CALLING ME CRAZY