#myshane couldn’t give less of a fuck about queer culture he just likes dick in his ass and he loves a Man. If you asked him about Stonewall he’d think it was the name of a tech startup.
#myilya is a fag and he loves it. him and harris watch queer movies once a month with Harris’ mom and they drink margaritas with little umbrellas in them.
Honestly I'm so glad I wasn't filmed being a stupid 19/20 yo uni student in Europe 15 years ago. I was puking in the streets, went to strip clubs with some frat guys (the beer was cheap there and women got free entrance), and was generally embarrassingly stupid. It was fine, I grew up to be a "responsible adult". I regret some choices, but that's how you learn.
Mack's and Dick's adventures in Bern are harmless by comparison. Let those guys live a little.
guys im sorry but shane hollander is not The Mom™️ of the centaurs. shane hollander is not nursing sick teammates back to health or sternly but lovingly reprimanding dumb rookies. he’s pissed off because theyre interfering with hockey and winning games. not to mention the general weirdness i find with giving grown adults in a friendly working relationship roles in a family. idk i love me some found family in the sense that youre able to choose who you want to be important figures in your life and who youll lean on and who youll let lean on you. but not in the fanfic brained (i say this with love) mom dad and kids. idk it feels heteronormative and like gender 2.0 yknow. anyways i digress shane is not a naturally nurturing guy and thats totally fine.
Shane "guys I want to win 7 cups, get your shit together" Hollander?? The rookies are terrified of him. He's a bitch most days when they aren't locked in.
The reason why the criticism of the NHL and its many flaws falls so flat in the game changers series is because Rachel Reid refuses to examine the role that race plays in your experience of hockey and hockey culture in Canada, which is honestly very in line with the Canadian, “well, we barely have racism up here!” even though people of color, especially Black and South Asian immigrants and First Nations people of color will tell you otherwise.
You cannot criticize and examine hockey culture without the foundational understanding of the role that whiteness plays in the toxicity of hockey culture.
When she said that Shane doesn’t carry grief or trauma it becomes glaringly obvious that she is missing one of the core problems of the toxicity of hockey culture in Canada. Whiteness is what enables this toxic and abusive behavior to continue. Yes, the NFL, NBA, and MLB all have them problems and issues and I’m not denying that, but those leagues all have players of color who would never be allowed to get away with what NHL players do.
I mean even when it comes to the rules of their sport, you think a 6’8, 300lb Black linebacker is getting a 5 minute penalty for shoving a ref or for getting in their face and yelling at them? You think a bunch of Black athletes could be living in billet homes in small towns with a reputation of violence against little white teenage girls and it would still be a national problem? Whiteness and racism is core and central to the problems in hockey. Look at Gavin McKenna, an indigenous man, being charged with a felony by State College police because they couldn’t wait to make an example out of him.
“Shane doesn’t carry grief or trauma.”
I’ve been reading hockey player memoirs and one of them is about an “average” player in the NHL. He was by no means a super star or prodigy, just very good at his sport and he talked about how, as a 6 or 7 year old child, he was already facing bullying by adults for how good he was at hockey. Parents of other players resented him so much for scoring they would tell their kids to target him and would scream obscenities. He was even flipped off as a child and humiliated by coaches because he was good at hockey. And this was a white man.
Add in the fact that Shane is Asian Canadian and hockey is a matter of national identity and lm willing to bet that the first time Shane remembers being called a slur, it was while he was playing hockey, and it was by an adult. Because if they already hate that a child is better at hockey than their child to the point of harassing them, how much worse does it get when the parent realizes that it is Asian child who is better at hockey than their kid? Shane would’ve been punished at every level of hockey starting at 5 years old for being good at the sport and being Asian because he would make white teammates, coaches, and fans feels “threatened” because for so long hockey has been centered around their whiteness.
Not only would Shane have been called names, parents would’ve been calling for their kids to “take him out” to take cheap shots and probably screaming slurs at Shane. And I’m willing to bet the coaches and refs did nothing unless the Hollanders threatened to sue, and not Yuna, David had to go down there and flash some legal might around and also the fact that he works for the treasury board and probably knows a thing or two about hockey Canada.
But Shane would’ve been punished for being not white and being good at hockey and it would’ve been severe because whiteness is the cornerstone of this sport.
Laila Edwards has talked about experiencing misogynoir as a hockey player and has, probably in the best interest of her PWHL draft and desire not to be harassed by racist trolls, not been as outspoken on vocal as she could be.
Look at Jason Robertson’s exclusion from the Olympics roster and the handwringing of hockey podcasters who “don’t get why the coaches made the decisions they made.” It’s because the foundation of this sport and its success is whiteness and white people feel threatened when people of color succeed so they have to knock them down a peg even to their own detriment because that’s how much they hate seeing people of color succeed.
Whiteness is the foundation of this sport and racism is so imbedded that parents will scream at their 10 year old to hit a six year old just because they’re brown and good at hockey
Like Hockey Canada is struggling to recruit and retain players of colors even as Canada gets more diverse because of the racism.
Even the big book about toxic hockey culture in Canada brushes over the racism even though whiteness and the excuses we make for white men ar front and center as to why hockey culture in Canada got to be the way it is.
You cannot address the issues in hockey Canada unless you also address the fact that the reason why it was allowed to get this bad is because of a whiteness and racism.
I have a hockey culture/time period question if you don’t mind! I know hazing has been an issue in almost all sports. I was wondering in your opinion would that have been something Shane/Ilya would have experienced or would their natural talent made them sort of “untouchable”. OR would that same talent make them even more of a target?
I’m imagining the added racialized element with Shane would put a bigger target on his back even if it was subconscious. Ilya’s father we see is incredibly important so I imagine that that might make him more insulted from harm but who knows.
Kinda fucked up, but also can you envision Shane or Ilya PARTICIPATING in hazing of others? More so in a team hierarchy sort of way. Maybe nothing awful but- just little things.
always up to talk abt hockey. yes, they would have been subject to hazing/other proliferated predatory/derogatory abuses/violations from kids AND adults in the hockey feeder system. i appreciate folks not wanting to get into it, but there is no untouchable guy in hockey. so yes, the latter. skill makes a target bc everyone wants to be the best or get one over on the best.
cannot find the link rn, but there's a good bit in a sid cr*sby retrospective that highlights his childhood tournaments, & how he was already so obviously better than the other kids, that he had to stop wearing his jersey in between games in the arenas bc parents/adults would see him and start harassing him for their child's sake; and they targeted him w deliberate attempts to injury/maim.
that's just a small bit of what's available publicly to see.
that's the culture.
yes, it would be worse with shane. exceptionally. with shane there's always gonna be overt (NOT subconscious) racist & violent white capitalist hegemony thinking he is not 'worth enough or white enough' to take on as a part of their for-profit elite white men's club. kids emulate and reflect this, to violently attack players of color.
players today in the league deal with this in a spectrum: if they fight/push back against racist comments/literally having things thrown at them, they are labelled a troublemaker (nazem k*dri). if they make comments pointing out that players are required to assimilate w league culture and not rock the boat, they are punished publicly (zayne p*rekh). if they make a young, dumb mistake, local law enforcement will move to try and end their career, instead of supporting them like white players through an entire SA trial (gavin mck*nna). IF they do none of the above and they break records and churn out killer point totals per season and rarely fight, (and even wear a police jersey on walk-in lmfuckingao) they will still somehow not the be the 'right(white) kind of player' to publicly commend (jason r*bertson).¹
so shane is in a three prong lock of: conformity to white masculinity, lack of bodily/identity autonomy, and systemic state-sanctioned racism and classism.
shane cannot win. and these overarching racist structures will manifest in microaggressions and overt violence against him. the churning animal of the canadian youth hockey system is rife with abuses from coaches paying to get certain kids transferred to their teams for win records/betting, to racist and homophobic epithets being standard, to youth hockey players this month, april'26 getting brought up on charges of SA with a weapon against some of their teammates in a hazing ritual. it's difficult to convey how integrated hockey is with culture and community particularly in rural canada, and how many financial claws it has. but shane was more than probably billeted with a (white, rich) family during his upswing through juniors and he has to play with almost entirely white/privileged kids and no exceptional status is gonna change that, and him being gay will infinitely complicate that and put a bigger target on him. (+ shane growing up haafu/diaspora child, quebecois forced assimilation/linguistic racism, autistic and undiagnosed, overly invested mother figure, ocd coping tendencies, made captain of og-6 team so young, eating disorder, etc.)
ilya is not insulated from harm, no. the russian hockey system exists as an extension of the state via kremlin policy (state-sanctioned propagandized cultural/gender norms and literal regulations for youth sports and the importance of it for russia's image/economy). part of which we can infer, like in the military, includes generational hazing practices echoing dedovshchina. ilya's father, as a general/member of state, is literally feeding into this ideology with his in-text abuse: "apologize to russia/are you not ashamed?".
ilya could have come up through the system through a designated sport school/UOR, which puts scrutiny and additional pressure on him and creates an isolated boarding-school environment which are renown as canada's, for featuring coach abuse and hazing rituals. systemic bodily violations a la overwork, forced drugging, lack of ability to quit the sport, etc. is proven.
so ilya is in a three prong lock of: conformity to culture, lack of bodily/financial autonomy, and state surveillance.
and contextually i think it's important to note the visceral pressure for russian players to maintain conformity thru state control and play for russian teams, adhere and vocally support socio-political ideology, etc. is lifelong. players have had their visas complicated to prevent them from leaving russia to rejoin the NHL after summers (kiril k*prizov), have been coerced to signing contracts to play in russia before leaving for the NHL/had to secret themselves out of russia to play (evgeni m*lkin), have been abducted from outside a rink and taken to complete military service (ivan f*dotov), have been threatened w jail/death to shut the fuck up abt russia's genocide against ukraine (nikita zador*v), etc. every one of them that will speak, reports feeling terrified for their families back in russia if they step wrong. ilya is already in a place of threat being so publicly a russian athlete, let alone tossing being partly gay into it. (+ ilya growing up in domestic abuse/parental suicide home environment, depression, cptsd, hypersexuality, russian in america, made captain so young, immigrant status instability, etc.)
for both of them, being preceived as gay is a dangerous evolution of the threat of being seen as not a team player, not a regular guy, not a hard enough worker. hazing doesn't stop at juniors. this is why they are both terrified in text, during the timeline of s1.
neither shane nor ilya exist in safe spaces, even while hockey is their escape and their joy. that's what makes it complicated. it's never just a game.
so, asking if they would participate in hazing is sorta like asking if they care about hockey, imho. they want to play hockey. to play hockey, you have to be able to be in the locker room with the rest of the guys. and to be in the room, you have to assimilate and conform and endure. yes different rooms have different tones, but everyone young and serious is jockeying for a place in the majors, is indoctrinated into this for-profit abuse system that demands children's bodies and isolates and attacks them to prevent change. hockey hazing culture is rooted in violent misogyny and how men perform that to the judgement of other men. juniors guys referring to girls they sleep with as 'kills', nhl as the only league without a domestic violence policy, etc.
and that becomes wanting to stay in the majors at all costs, and hypermasculine misogynistic performance to white NA capitalist standard is the requirement. guys get real ugly about that and you have to pay your dues, prove you are part of the hockey machine, just a cog. no better than anyone else in the room, what happens in the room stays in the room, no matter the ice. and they don't view this as hazing the way we analyze it as hazing, really. they view it as just how it is. and everyone either makes it through and proves they're a man of the team or they wash out.
shane and ilya made it through. that's what it takes.
thanks for the frank questions. this post is not suuuper detailed, but i think this is important to talk about, obviously. i think we owe it to real kids/folks in these industries to discuss this stuff and keep it in our minds when we engage in fanworks abt HR. bc our support of a hockey tv show feeds into support of hockey as a sport. and that's complicated.
some supplemental texts for shane+ilya+hazing:
@rozzed 's adroit and cutting exploration of generational hazing re: david and shane: here, here
@transshanehollander 's essential, more eloquent, and thorough discussion of structural racism shane endures in childhood/the league and how RR frames it: here, here
Contrails by grudekoks (glanzkohl) which frankly explores the depth of possible cultural and sexual trauma for shane and ilya
i looked over it and i ached by IsvsWorld which explores shane's relationship w his own racial id/hockey system/microagressions
chapter 1 of cracked plexiglass by syntjjh which focuses on hockey being synonymous with white nationalism in canada
@yiiiiiiiikes25 's deft and detailed exploration of sexual assault, institutional misogyny and conformity to capitalist structures: here
@kiyaar recs starting reading on generational military hazing in russia as related to russian masculinity policing: here, here
important context for reality vs. fandom: current uptick in bos, MA youth hazing from players and coaches as a response to HR popularity that talks abt the pervasiveness in NA sport
two links aggregating further readings abt hockey+hazing+racism+gender: here, here. feel free to put in comments any works/fanworks you found particularly insightful!
footnotes
yes, jason is american. i'm pointing to him bc his point totals are close to what shane would be churning out and it has not mattered his entire career wrt the racism he experiences.
In Unrivaled, I’m gonna need Ilya ‘Lover Boy’ Rozanov to be completely unhinged when it comes to Shane. For over 10 years he had to be cool, calm and collected in public. They are now out, on the same team and that is his HUSBAND. I want Ilya doing press and constantly saying “my husband” and Shane just rolling his eyes. I want the other Centaurs players teasing their captain for being so in love. When assholes try to chirp on the ice, I want Ilya making sure people keep his husband’s name out their mf’n mouths. I want Ilya finding ways to bring up Shane in conversation so he can call him “my husband”. llya’s social media bio should read “#81 Shane Hollander’s Husband. I play hockey sometimes too.” Let Ilya love his man unabashedly because he and Shane fought so hard for this-and they finally got it. Let Ilya “my man my man my man” everyone to death 😭😭😭😭
My theory for The Night Manager is that Teddy will find out about the recording of Roper saying that Danny is his only son and heir and that he doubts that Teddy could fit into ‘civilised life’. He will find out that he is nothing more than an asset that Roper can exploit and use and then discard when he is finished with him, and as a result Teddy will crash out. After all, Teddy is simply a scared little boy who wants nothing more than the love and attention of his absentee father. I think Pine might make him listen to the recording , and I think as a consequence Teddy will have to choose between continuing to aid his father in his business or betraying him for Jonathan. I also think that Teddy will die either way - as a sacrifice or as a steel-minded traitor to Richard Roper and his plans. (Personally, I’m a huge advocate for Teddy switching sides and having a redemption arc of sorts, due to the SH scene in ep3 seemingly displaying some kind of guilt about the whole thing, and that defecting to the ‘good’ side is a way of him cleansing himself from his sins.) However, ultimately, the shipment will still happen regardless of Teddy’s rebellion. And the fallout from that will be what S3 is centred around.
The absolutely blatant way HR has the commentators reflect the current states of Ilya and Shane tickles me.
Commentator after their very first game against each other refers to the Canadian team as still finding their identity, and how Shane (as a hockey player of course) couldn't get past Russia's defense but Ilya (as a hockey player of course stop asking) was consistently able to get past Canada's defenses? Somewhere out there Rachel and Jacob are laughing tears into their coffee.
It occurs to me: we've seen a lot of Essek Thelyss over the course of the animated series, but I think this episode was the first time we've actually seen the Shadowhand
Only my lack of planning and terrible footwear stopped me from exploring an actual vergessen Sanatorium in the woods outside Zagreb today. Next time I'll come in pants and better shoes!
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