I haven’t read the books so I’m not really sure of the canon of it all, but I keep seeing references to Ilya being the Hollander’s favourite son and I was curious what your thoughts are about it. Cause I’ve seen that kind of content in different ships (though maybe not canon?) and it’s never bothered me before, but there’s something about Shane and his relationship with his parents that leaves me feeling kinda gutted every time. It’s great for Ilya and he deserves that warmth and love, but then I think about Shane hearing it and my heart aches because I can see him thinking like. Yeah, no, of course Ilya is the favourite. Who wouldn’t love Ilya? Ilya deserves that. And I think of Shane telling his mom he tried. And. Idk. It hurts every time I read it. And I know you’re someone that’s talked about the Hollander family dynamic not just being all rainbows and sunshine so I wondered if you’d come across that or had any thoughts on it or anything.
i also hate this. but hear me out. i don't think they mean it maliciously. i don't think they realize how it makes shane feel. cus like imagine you spend your whole life killing yourself to be as perfect as your mom hopes you’ll be. you don’t have a childhood because you’re always training for your adulthood. you sign away your life to her favorite hockey team the second you’re old enough to do so. you do everything she tells you, you sign every contract she hands you, you attend every social event she recommends, you bend over backwards to show her that you love her and respect her and want to do what she asks. you starve yourself and punish yourself and deny yourself and push and push and push yourself. and in a way you still fail to measure up. you still fail to achieve the perfection she so sincerely hoped you had inside of you. and then along comes this friendly handsome blonde white man who’s bigger than you, more outgoing than you, almost or just as good at hockey as you. and your parents love him. and he doesn’t starve himself or punish himself or deny himself or push himself. he walks into their life and just Is, and they love him. and in a way they make it clear you pale in comparison to him. and they all tell you that maybe you’re trying too hard, because look at ilya. he doesn’t try that hard, and he’s our favorite.
and we have to keep in mind that shane already thinks he's doing a bad job. he's bad at being a man, he's bad at being their son, he's just failing in literally every single aspect of his life. we see it manifest in his fear and anxiety and control issues and his eating disorder. and at every turn, it's reinforced. the way his life is managed & the way it plays out tells him that he SHOULD worry. he SHOULD feel bad. it's constantly reiterated to him that there is so much riding on him, there is so much he's responsible for, so much he has to achieve, that he cannot possibly let any of it slip for even a second. and even after all that he is still not their "favorite". i actually think shane should’ve gone crazy. i actually think shane should’ve snapped. he should’ve bought a gun. idk if that's easy to do in canada or not but i would have supported him if he'd tried.
and you could say “it’s not that deep!” it absolutely is. shane is their son. he is their only son. he has been making himself miserable his whole entire life in order to be the son he thinks they want. and i know people will also think “but ilya deserves to have parents that love him!” so true bestie nobody said he didn’t. it's possible to bring a partner into the fold without, like, acting like he's a replacement. without making it seem like he's finally filling the hole shane left by not being a good enough son. & i'm sorry but the way that the dynamic is written is so unfair and so damaging to shane. what has he ever done except try? and they expect him to try. and then they’re like goddamn do you ever do anything but try? lighten up, weirdo. like… would you not just want to go ape shit?
but here’s the other thing that i think is interesting. shane is basically his mother’s employee. and he knows it and he hates it and their entire relationship hinges on how well he performs as an employee. their familial relationship is somewhat secondary to shane's public image & career. to clarify, i’m not saying shane’s parents don’t love him. i think they love him a lot. i think shane's mom is just as bad with feelings as he is, and this is how she shows him that she loves him. they have created a vicious cycle for themselves. because she shows him that the love is inextricably linked to his success, his image, his obedience, his conformity. if he loses his career, he loses his mother. if he loses his deal with rolex, he loses his mother. the worst possible thing shane believes he can do is disappoint someone. he's terrified of it. quite literally petrified to paralysis of it. and their entire relationship is built on his success, both the existence of it and the ways they can continue to make it bigger. and yuna doesn't really realize this, because she thinks she's doing such a great job at showing shane how valued he is by investing so much time and energy into his success. and i do not doubt for a second that they love each other, i really don't. but i think shane was severely emotionally neglected. i think he was a quiet kid who excelled at a lot, and because of this, they considered him pretty self sufficient. i think they assumed he didn't need reassurance or excessive affection or anything like that. he was always able to handle himself. but he wasn't. he was internalizing everything. he was strapping it all down. i think shane thinks he is a machine. i think he thinks he is a vessel for all of his parents hopes & dreams, and if he fails, he ruins everything. he is no longer worthy of being their son because he couldn't live up to their expectations.
re: the emotional neglect, he did not develop those neuroses in a vacuum. he is the thing they made him. now obviously RR wants him to have become the way he is all by himself, despite his loving parents. but that is not the case. they're helicopter parents, absolutely. i think his father, while kind and clearly very proud of him, was not much better than yuna as far as making sure shane understood that he was still valuable as a person (and their child) without a million trophies and a calvin klein contract. i think they feel entitled to his time and his space. pressing on him so hard to go to london is a good example of this. and he folds, obviously, like they knew he would. in e6 when shane says "please text" his mom immediately says "why? we told you when we'll be there" and ilya says "no. please text" and then david says "don't worry we will" is like... i mean it's kind of nothing and it's kind of everything. shane lays down a soft boundary that his mom walks over because that's her son and they love each other and she doesn't need to worry about not being welcome. and then ilya and david are like omg for real... please text. and she gets it, obviously, but the boundary has to be reinforced by two other people who aren't shane before she accepts it. the bit where shane's crying and then his mom goes "okay enough, stop crying, we have other things to worry about" is also so... insane. i love that hudson has commented on this a few times too. every time i write shane meta i refer back to hudson. so terrific. but he said on andy cohen that shane was not satisfied with his coming out experience, because, "there's still a clinical nature to it. like, what about reebok? so it's not perfect open arms." and he refers to the end of e6 as "bittersweet" which i think is so fabulous.
in later episodes we see shane pushing back against this dynamic but it's in a soft, almost childish way. he gets annoyed, and uses a pretty unpleasant tone of voice with his parents when he feels he is not being heard. he’s used to not being listened to, and it exasperates him because he knows they won't listen, and they'll just end up talking him into doing whatever they want him to do anyway. “not during training”, the whole london argument, “no mom nobody knows”, “i’m always wearing skates”. like he is very childish at those moments because she makes him feel like a child. and sometimes he is happy to have this direction. "i don't know, my mom told me to bring wine", for example. but sometimes he is so worn out. "i didn't feel like being managed" is great it's thrown into another scene about something else but it's so... telling. to me.
re: coming out, i don't think shane was afraid of his parents being homophobic. but i think he is so so so obsessed with perfection that he couldn't imagine letting them down like that, because he knows that something like being gay could make or break his career. he's in a uniquely precarious position. and he engages in some behavior that i think, quite frankly, could be considered self harm/self destructive because of it. his pursuit of perfection is absolutely agonizing for him. but he thinks that is his only option. his only choice is to be the best, or to be nothing. and i will clarify again: i don't think his parents are "abusing" him or neglecting him on purpose. i think they just think that's he tough and a hard worker, and that he's fine with enduring such high expectations. they know he can reach their standards. and they think he's handling it really well. i DO think they notice that it gets harder for him to endure as he gets older—we see them trying, a little bit, to poke at him, trying to find out if he's hiding something, if he's happy, if he's doing okay. but they've always taken his stoicism at face value and it's hard for the three of them to break that cycle. because he has only ever offered them the version of himself that lives to make them happy. he doesn't let them see anything else, because he's afraid they won't like what they see.
and again: none of this is ilya's fault. i think it's awesome that they love him. i think shane also loves that they love him. i think it's super. but i just think maybe we could, like, ease up on my buddy shane. like we could cut him a little slack. we could give him a break. i think what shane really needs, sometimes, is a hug from his mom. not a lecture from his manager. and i think they forget how to be family, somehow, and it's going to be difficult for them to reestablish a new framework for their relationship, so that shane is free to be himself and yuna is able to express her support and approval.
i'm sorry this is so so long i just think there's so much to this. like he's literally buckling under the weight of her expectations and she thinks that by expecting things from him she is showing she believes in him. and he tried. he tried really hard. but he just can't help it. and it keeps going forever. really great. unless you're shane. then it's torture. but from an outside perspective it's really great.
