Mostly Fandom Ramblings

Elder Millennial

[letheanseraph]

I keep comparing HR to Yuri On Ice because I’ll run into short fanfic posts on Tumblr/Threads/Twitter of Ilya being super happy and unhinged with Shane and Anya, and it’s exactly how Victor would act with Yuri and Makkachin. Chances are the writer doesn’t know they’re doing this because the crossover between the fandoms is still small and I feel like I’m screaming with joy into my own internal void. 🫠

[letheanseraph]

A personal headcanon nobody asked for: along with going by the book descriptions, somehow my image of Ilya Rozanov came out to be a very muscled up version of Christophe Giacometti.

[lily-s-world]

Headcanon that Shane ask Harris for help for his social media, and Harris convinces him to do trends. Shane ends up with a video of "In your teens you’re gonna be nervous about introducing yourself to Russia's best teen hockey player. It’s very important that you do it anyway" and includes a montage of Hollanov wedding pictures. Ilya ends up tearing up when he sees it.

[letheanseraph]

You know what….🥹

[letheanseraph]

“Ilya Rozanov is Victor Nikiforov coded” may as well be a tag on AO3. Or maybe I just have a type.

[scunthotter]

Let's all hold hands and agree that in season 2 both Shane and Ilya are trying their best and we will not pit two bad bitches against each other. 🤝

[eldritchazure]

i think a part of ilya truly believes that when god created shane god took one of shane’s ribs and used that to create ilya. sometimes when theyre laying in bed together after having mind blowing sex or whatever ilya catches himself feeling around shane’s ribs like he’s trying to find the gap

[eldritchazure]

@fruitbatman holy shit i love your tags???? they are wonderful and beautiful and so very precious to me <3

yk how people are always saying that ilya stretches out shane’s shirts because he’s always putting his whole upper body under them while shane is still wearing them? ilya does that because he’s trying to burrow his way back to His Spot

[letheanseraph]

Some ramblings about Heated Rivalry and the romance genre:

(Originally posted this on Threads, but curious to what response I might get here outside the rage bait algorithm.)

A romance author I follow on Tiktok once mentioned how romances are hard to write. I wasn’t reading romance stories yet at the time, I just thought her videos were hilarious. With reading the Game Changer series and learning more about the genre, I’m understanding better what she was getting at. I’m still super new to the genre.

Regarding Shane’s development (or lack there of) within the romance genre, Shane gets his love story and HEA. The story is the struggle Shane and Ilya face in wanting to be together in the way that truly makes them happy. Some events happen to them, but they figure it out. They end up together in a much better environment for the both of them. The plot, their wants/needs centers around their love story. The romance story did what the romance story is supposed to do if I’m not mistaken?

I’ve seen folks on both Threads and Tumblr discuss in great length and detail how Shane could have been better written. He’s one of the few if not only talented and famous Asian players in a very white sport in a story that’s addressing toxic hockey culture. There’s so much story that can be pulled from this description alone, but we hardly get insight into that even when we see his POV. The lack of Shane POV gets worse in The Long Game. I think those of us who claim Shane is punished by the narrative, that he doesn’t really have a HEA, are trying to address the meat of his story(or lack thereof). The part of the romance that can be hard to write. The journey, why we’re here reading this story when we already know the plot formula and ending.

Reading the whole series, a lot of serious topics get mentioned but aren’t further developed or explored. It’s a pattern I accepted by the time I got to The Long Game. But it feels jarring when we see it in the writing of characters of color. Like our 2 main leads Shane and Fabian, compared to the development of the majority white leads of these books. This isn’t new for us BIPOC readers. It’s still a problem in a lot of areas of storytelling.

The defense I’m seeing for Shane’s narrative being fine the way it is is that the story filled out all its obligations as a Romance. I agree, it does. All the books follow a certain formula and I see the plot points being checked. I was still able to enjoy it. And that leads to my next questions: is further development for these characters limited by the genre conventions? Could we, shouldn’t we be asking for more? Or should I be looking for better written romance books?

[shanesprophecy]

I didn't know I was lonely 'til I saw your face

[myshangel]

ilya says i would die for you one too many times and it’s always a joke, or half a joke, but shane very seriously puts his hands on ilyas cheeks and says okay but i need you to live for me. i don’t want you to die for me. i want you to live for me. i know it’s harder and i know it’s not as sexy to you but it’s what i want. i want to get gross and old with you so we can die at the exact same time from old age. that’s what i want. and you’re so good at giving me what i want. okay?

[the-queens-men2]

something I wish more people understood regarding the RR discord drama is the fact that the issue is not only how she talks about shane. shane can be stupid, shane can be selfish, and shane is more than capable of having a million other bad traits.

but why is this only about shane? to my knowledge RR has not spoken like this about ilya or at least not to the same frequency. so then why does she feel the need to consistently reiterate negative comments about shane?

why is the main conflict in TLG, as per her own words, attributed to shane's supposed selfishness (im not going to even get into how i feel about this claim, thats an entire different post)? shouldn't a romance book focus on how the shortcomings of both characters impacts the relationship? why isn't ilya's lack of empathy regarding shane's disordered eating/overall anxiety also a factor, or his inability to communicate until he blows up? why is shane the asshole for not focusing on his sad boyfriend, but ilya is not expected to worry about how shane's anxiety has a significant negative impact on his life?

i can maybe understand how as a white nuerotypical author RR did not initially consider how shane's autism and race would impact his life, and how it would certainly be traumatic for someone like that to be a star player in the nhl. but to not only do that, and then claim that he has no trauma, and then double down and sideline a question specifically talking about shane's trauma to instead talk again about how ilya has trauma because his parents are dead whereas shane has good parents is insane. to have ilya claim in the book that has a white man, he understands the dark side of hockey more than shane, a POC, is insane.

what people need to realize is that when all of this piles up, the jokes she makes are not just jokes. its consistent evidence that she was not initially capable of exploring shane's character with the traits she gave him, nor is she interested in changing that fact.

[somewhereincairparavel]

you know what, it's actually not surprising to me in the least, to see so many people tell us it's "not that deep" when we're expressing concerns about shane, considering I've always had an inkling that about 90% of this fandom seems to favour ilya the same way rachel does. the moment the show became popular. I knew it would happen. and I knew why. not saying all of them favour him for the same reason but c'mon now. we know the subconscious bias exists. of course it's not that deep, why would it be? it's not about ilya. you just know these people would be fuming if rachel said shit about ilya's depression or called HIM an idiot. people are outing themselves here after that video.

or if shane were the one who backed ilya against a wall in anger in that TLG scene, you just know everyone would be bringing it up every 5 minutes to trash him and call him all sorts of names. people already pick him apart in the book even though he didn't do this. yet it's all crickets when ilya did this. right. not once have I seen ppl mention this scene.

the fandom has had a pattern with dismissing the racism hudson received and subject shane to so many microaggressions disguised as headcanons, but always tip toe around critiquing ilya's flaws. his always begins with "I love Ilya...." but shane's critisism is just blatant, harsh and sharp, people aren't afraid of bashing shane the way they are afraid about ilya, because they know they can bash shane comfortably, they're aware that the fandom's unspoken notion is more pro ilya. so yeah. I'm not letting this one go sorry not sorry.

it's very telling that all the ppl I've seen coming out to call this out are NDs, POC and people with EDs. rachel should have known before writing for a marginalized community that...... she will have readers from the community who will be assessing her work. the least she could've done is NOT mock them, when she's profiting from it.

[kdkdjfjejskbdjdkaks]

I am not expecting anyone to see this but I just needed to get it out into the world. There has been a lot of Troy Barrett related discourse on like every single app and I think a lot of it is interesting and I am enjoying the different perspectives in which the books can be viewed. However I do think it’s pertinent to point out that Dallas Kent’s lack of racism towards Shane is most likely a deliberate choice by the author.

Dallas Kent cannot be racist because that means Troy is racist, or at least outwardly condoned his friends racism (which is still racist!) Additionally, this would mean that Ilya becoming buddies with Troy would mean he became buddies with a guy that was racist towards his boyfriend, which would be insane way to write any character in a romance book, much less the author’s favorite. It risks alienating readers of color who, understandably, don’t want to have to sympathize with racist characters when they’re just trying to read hockey smut.

However, this leads to a strange gap in the narrative. Even though Dallas isn’t directly racist towards Shane, we see in Tough Guy that he has a respect for Ilya that he doesn’t seem to have for Shane. When Troy says that he thinks they’re fucking, Dallas defends ilya by saying he couldn’t be gay, but agrees that Shane probably is. While the reasoning for this was probably meant to be that Ilya has a reputation with women while Shane does not (or that the rumors of Shane being gay have reached Toronto), it’s hard to not see the implication that Dallas believes this due to stereotypes surrounding East Asian men (at least for anyone familiar with these stereotypes).

It’s possible the author isn’t aware of this implication because she herself perpetuates these stereotypes through the way she writes her characters. Shane’s race plays little to no role in his relationship with hockey and he has no relationship to Japanese culture within the text. However, he is repeatedly described as being hairless, physically smaller than Ilya, and is a submissive bottom. This is just fetishization. It kind of grossed me out when I read the books to be honest.

She doesn’t engage at all with the social implications of Shane’s race outside of the commissioner, who is supposed to be the irredeemable villain of the series, implying that Shane can’t be gay because he’s already Asian and that’s too much (this conversation was super fucked up but it was also glossed over in favor of Ilya worrying about whether Shane will still want to come out, because the author is uninterested in Shane as a character outside of Ilya). I honestly think she included this just to hammer home the fact that Crowell is supposed to be evil without considering how damaging it must be to hear, especially for Shane who has built his whole life around hockey. If I get irritated enough I might write another vent about how Shane was treated in the long game tbh because despite how many warnings I saw about how I was going to hate him, I ended up more irritated with Ilya because of how a lot of his problematic thoughts and actions went unchallenged by the narrative.

But going back to Troy, this disconnect between what the author most likely intended and what the text implies is a common dilemma when writing redeemed bigot characters. Troy can be redeemed from his homophobia more easily because he’s gay and felt as though he had to perform it due to the hostile environment he was in (whether you think this is justified or not is up for debate, but it is more understandable than him being racist). He’s not directly misogynistic as far as I can remember, but if he is then he’s also redeemed for this by believing and advocating for victims of sexual assault. He is also ableist towards Ryan by making fun of his anxiety, but this situation is different from if he was racist towards Shane. Ryan never has to see Troy again if he desires, while Shane ends up playing on the same team as him (and again, Troy is good friends with his husband). He is forced to interact with him.

Reid has to walk a fine line between making him enough of an asshole to need a redemption arc but not so much of an asshole that readers don’t want to forgive him. Unfortunately for her, the aura of racism that surrounds the NHL is so pervasive that it makes Dallas not being racist feel unrealistic. I knew nothing about the NHL before watching the show/reading the books except that it was so white that people were genuinely impressed by hockey players having wives/girlfriends who were white brunettes instead of white blondes. Like that’s insane. It’s hard to read anything negative Dallas, a character who has no issue with other forms of bigotry, says about Shane without sensing a racist undertone. And that racist undertone makes Troy look bad.

I think this will be a bigger issue in the show because a) they have already acknowledged racism and the impact of race and b) the show has a much wider audience than the books ever did, which is why a lot of these points haven’t come up until the show got popular. In my opinion, the best way to do this would be to make Troy also a person of color. Tbh when I was reading Role Model he was biracial with a white dad in my head. Doesn’t help that he looks sort of ethnically ambiguous on the cover 😭

There have been a lot of discussions of how badly Reid handles race is her books, and a lot of people coming to her defense seem to think that it’s the world’s biggest insult to say her writing has racist implications when it clearly does. This goes back to the age-old phenomenon of white people thinking it’s more offensive to be called racist than it is to be racist. Personally, I think she needed a sensitivity reader badly. I also think she will probably never acknowledge any of this publicly because there’s no good explanation for some of it and it’ll make her look bad. Regardless, I hope they fix at least some of it in the show because unlike the books, I did actually like it and would be sad if the second season repeated the book’s mistakes.

[pookietsunoda]

OK like is it bad that I'm finally glad people are getting on board with the "Rachel Reid kinda flopped with writing Shane and doesn't take his issues (racism, autism, eating disorder) seriously" train or what.

I do think some ppl are doing too much (I'm assuming she's being a bit hyperbolic or snarky in her discord messages, she's not literally Satan incarnate, I don't think she "hates" Shane). But considering a while ago she posted notes about how Ilya was so much cooler and smarter than Shane, and that Shane has no trauma, this is... certainly a data point LOL. Also I do get the confirmation that she did not intend to write Shane as having an ED in TLG and lowkey just intended it to be a recurring inconvenience for other characters to make fun of him for. Which like. Girl!

[letheanseraph]

Me, a Yuri On Ice fan, when I read fics describing Ilya Rozanov as an octopus in bed during the night, being overall unhinged when he can love Shane openly, and running into one fic that had him putting a finger to his lip while contemplating doing something mischievous:

[imdoingattendance]

HAHAHA NOT THE REVIVAL OF THE ZUTARA-KATAANG SHIPPING WARS

Yall are we SERIOUSSSS

[local-idi0t]

kataang shippers are beefing with zutara shippers, zutara shippers are beefing with kataang shippers and zukka shippers are being fed with their crumbs. guys. we're so back

[dragonmuse]

If you can't withstand it, I get it. If you have to protect your mental health, do what you must.

But as a librarian, a reader, and a writer, please hold off on deleting your work if you can. You can orphan it on AO3 or go anon! There are options.

Please don't let the censors win because that's all they are. Censors in new coats with the same shady underwear. They are bullies and people who cannot conceive of creating things themselves. They have existed in every fandom with varying degrees of success and they will always be there waiting in the next one.

Your writing is worth preservation. It is worth standing there against the test of time long after these jackals have moved on to the next likely looking prey.

And if you love something you're reading, comment when you can. It's hard to admit, but sometimes that one negative comment needs a lot of positive ones to drown it out. Just how the mind works, nothing rational about it.