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It really does bug me how certain parts of the fandom do not seem to be able to discuss Ilya's very obvious, undeniable trauma without minimizing Shane's.

You never see the reverse. And admittedly that'd be very hard to do. Ilya's dad is awful from the very beginning. His brother is using him. The laws of his country are oppressive and terrible.

But it's possible to talk about that without pretending that everything is fine and good for his partner. (Disclaimer: this is about the tv series, not the books. One day I will read them and I'm sure I'll have many thoughts about that too. But not today.)

I've said before, I don't think that Shane's family is meant to be a perfect contrast to Ilya's terrible one. I think that they're meant to be parallels instead.

Yuna and David are good people who very obviously love their son. They're warm and affectionate and supportive. That part is a contrast, yes.

But they're also his managers. Yuna overtly, but David is always in support of her. And from the beginning, we see what that means:

In the same scene that we see Grigory Rozanov tell his son to listen and not speak, we see Yuna Hollander nodding and smiling through her teeth at racist microaggressions while subtly nudging her son to stay attentive.

That's a very deliberate parallel.

The next scene that we see Yuna, Shane has just learned that his rival orchestrated a joint ad campaign and is distracted. Yuna is pushing about Reebok hard - he has to be seen wearing them, he's the youngest person they've signed to a deal, he needs to represent the kids like him. There's no real opportunity for Shane to get a word in edgewise, assuming he'd have been inclined to do so.

But I don't think it's an accident that this scene is placed in between the reveal of Ilya's machination and the shower scene. This was a moment where Shane might have been able to talk to someone about what was happening, but instead, it's about brands and pressure.

The next major scene between Yuna and Shane is later: Shane's late to the restaurant. Yuna understands, she's already ordered his food for him. That part's very sweet. But when he starts talking about YouTube, her immediate response is "you should have been watching hockey." David's a bit better here - he expresses some interest in the videos that Shane claims he was watching, but then falls into line pretty quickly. "Is Rolex on YouTube" has a bumbling charm, but it also serves to redirect back to Yuna's business deals.

It bugs me a bit that David seems to have a warmer reception from the side of fandom that is willing to be critical of the Hollanders, because he doesn't really do anything different from Yuna. He's softer about it, but it's still the same pressure.

I've brought up episode four before, but I think that's where we see the crux of what Shane's relationship with his parents has become, in two important scenes.

One is in the montage, the orange soda ad, where Shane's in the wet t-shirt, being made wetter, and then Yuna comes over and adjusts his shirt to maximize the sex appeal.

To me, that's the single most disturbing scene in the episode. Because, yes, Shane is a grown man. And there's nothing wrong with a grown man taking part in sexualized ads. Even if he looks extremely uncomfortable.

But when your mother is the one who sets up the ads. When she is the one ignoring your visible discomfort and adjusting your clothes to expose more of your body...

In an ideal world, if you have a miserable time at your job and you want to complain, you could do so with your friends or family. In an ideal world, your parents, in particular, are supposed to be able to give you support and comfort.

But what happens if Shane has a bad day? What if the Reebok shoes give him blisters? What if the wet-t-shirt itches? What if the underwear set was really cold? What if the photographer makes mean comments? What if a director gets handsy? Can Shane complain to his parents? Would he?

Don't get me wrong, I think that Yuna would raise hell for Shane if she ever thought there was some kind of problem like that. But does Shane realize that?

Or does he think that any expression of discomfort would get the same response that he got when he said he didn't want to go to Wimbledon?

Folks have pointed out the parallel that both Scott and Ilya have basically lost a significant portion of their childhoods at the age of twelve, when Scott lost his parents, and Ilya lost his mom respectively.

I think it's significant that Shane would have been around the same age when, as he told Rose, the sponsors and crazy stuff started. When hockey stopped being fun and started being more intense. When his parents stopped being his parents and started being his managers instead.

It's not as profound a loss as Scott and Ilya had. There are times when Yuna and David do act like parents. We see that best in the fifth episode, when Shane is staying with them after his injury. When hockey and brands are off the table, they are able to act like his parents again.

They're alive, they love him, and they can learn to be better.

But it also says something that, after that truly lovely and honest scene between Yuna and Shane, that Yuna doesn't let her son cry it out until HE's done. She's the one who says "okay, enough. what's the plan?"

And then, it's back to branding, sponsorships, sports and money. And yes, Yuna is doing this for her son. But she's also, again, running roughshod over his discomfort - likely a big contributor to why her son has a meltdown at the dinner table.

A gilded cage is still a cage. A velvet fist is still a fist. And just because Yuna and David are warmer and kinder than Ilya's family was doesn't necessarily mean that beneath that the pressure is all that different.

I think a lot of the aversion to being critical of the Hollanders comes from the way that (from what I understand) they really embrace Ilya in the Long Game. I'm looking forward to seeing that develop in season 2. But we can accept that the Hollanders are good for Ilya while at the same time acknowledging that they may not have been always the best for Shane.

(That said, when I see folks talking about how Yuna can go out and get brand deals for Ilya like she does for Shane, I cringe. I'd like to think Ilya wouldn't have the same reliance that makes her dynamic with Shane uncomfortable, but maybe let her find him a different agent/manager anyway.)

enthusiastofawesome

Can we take a moment to appreciate this moment where David seems to notice that Shane is GOING THROUGH IT before anyone else does?

He is looking over at him like "Oop. Seen this before. This boy is about to crack, I better keep an eye on him..."

and sure enough...

I know that we don't get a tonne of Shane's relationship with David in the same way we do with Yuna, but there are so many subtle moments that hint at David being SO attuned to Shane's emotional cues (this moment and at the restaurant talking about Wimbledon, not to mention the fact that while Yuna and Shane are outside obviously having a heart to heart he's like "Well this is a group of people who need comfort food. Let's make pasta.") and it just makes me adore him.

Yuna is the planner. She deals with a crisis by finding the plan and the path forward, but I think that means she sometimes has blinders on to how people around her are actually coping.

But David is an observer. He looks at Shane and can read his microexpressions and the subtle changes in the way he holds himself or how clipped his speech is becoming and quietly just tries to be present and ready to support when it's time. He gives Shane space, but is always quietly attuned to where he is at while Yuna blazes a path forward for them.

What a beautiful little family unit they have.

extra-banana

I love when people play with the idea of Ilya finally getting unconditional motherly love again through Yuna. I LOVE IT!

But David gives Ilya a dad for the first time. Not just a father. Not just a man of the house. He has a DAD.

I'm sure their relationship is a little awkward at first, but David actually wants to talk about cars with Ilya. They stand in Ilya's garage, both in that dad stance, feet shoulder width apart, arms cross or hands on hips, talking and pointing and just being dudes.

Of course Yuna and Shane are like "they've been out there for two hours is there really that much to talk about?"

Cut to David and Ilya with the hoods open pointing at engine compartments and saying words Yuna and Shane think are in a different language

parcai

i need david to find out about ilya’s piece of shit abusive father & horrific childhood in unrivaled so bad it makes me unwell. i can’t even quite place why, except that yuna/ilya is the more obvious axis people talk about & david/shane, for good reason. shane was a sensitive kid, and even as an adult he’s easier to wound than ilya, with his quirks and particularities and softer upbringing, so david hollander, the gentle, observant, patient half of the hollander parents, is the most nurturing figure to be with him

and ilya is brash and sharp and off-putting sometimes, the same way yuna is (including to shane) so they get lumped together in this shared understanding of being Difficult People With Histories. which is true. but something about david, sweet teddy bear, soft-spoken, earnest david, knowing about ilya’s upbringing and being quietly, incandescently angry about it…

i need someone to be angry for ilya, not just sad or pitying. i need it to be someone who would never feel like that otherwise. i need it to deepen how good of an adoptive father david is to him—how he’s healing not just trauma but an entire warped understanding of what a father even is, for a grown-up kid who never, ever deserved any of that hell. david hollander is where shane gets his boring from, & ilya has never before received so much stability, steady love and affection, warmth, and boring in his life.

themenacewhowrites

It’s really important to me that Yuna is Unhinged about her David.

I need it.

You mean her hot hockey player that she pulled by knowing what the hell he was talking about when he talked about hockey games?

You mean her scrumptious husband whose edges were sharp enough to turn on a literal dime?

You mean the “secret weapon” of McGill’s team that lived in the shadows of the fast and the flashy by dint of keeping up and supporting all their spazzy madness in such a way that made it work instead of flop and humiliate the whole team?

You mean Professor Desult’s favorite student? The man who notably hates everyone and took great delight in failing students? His favorite Taxation and Business Tax Principals student, David Leigh Hollander?

This very same David Hollander who got selected for salutatorian because only a few of the right professors knew who he was that his grades and successes really were that genuinely good, and argued the case of this exceptional and frightfully bland student who was also a literal giant and a major support structure in every single thing he was a part of? From the hockey team to the party cleanup crew to the most pleasant lab-mate you could ask for? Literally “the guy” anyone wanted in their corner at a pinch, if they knew his name? Mister “has good grades on a hockey scholarship” himself?

The legendary “who’s that hockey player that’s always with Yuna?” that nobody can quite believe that the bombshell Yuna would be seen with?

That guy? Who looks like the hottest, most generic Canadian “Canada-man” to ever walk the earth? With his quiet smile and his reading glasses and his curls and his enormous arms?

The only boy in all of McGill that Theeeee Yuna ever seriously dated?

Obsessed.

She is obsessed with him.

Nobody believes her when she deigns to share some of his insights to life and living and Montreal’s upcoming draft opportunities. “You mean to tell me that David said that? The man who smiles and says three words on a good day?”

Not that she does this often, because that’s her man. Yuna does not share. And David is a little shy and he doesn’t love being talked about. Not so much she doesn’t “kiss and tell”, she doesn’t collect his deepest thoughts and considerations and opinions and tell them to anybody either. Those are special and precious and David entrusted them to her.

David lets her talk him into and out of things for the joy of learning how she thinks. (She never gets him to stop opening doors or carrying stuff though. He’s a very stubborn man and lines like “What? I got these arms for nothing?” are too silly out of his mouth as he flops his arms at his sides like a cartoon character to argue with seriously for long.)

They hike and skate and read and study and go to the movies and hockey games.

They argue over the correct way to sharpen skates and how choppy a power push can be before it’s straight up sloppy and not just fast and hard. They disagree over Pad Thai and go cheese shopping together for “gourmet grilled cheese” nights during finals. They skate and race and compete with grades and silent conversations and meaningful looks nobody else sees. They go around and around over what the meaning of life is and whether there could be aliens and Sasquatches out there in the unknowns.

David absolutely surprises Yuna with a ring and the question on a pretty night, on a pretty bridge, under a bright moon, after a very fun game at the Centre Bell.

(Wouldn’t you know? That was the last time Montreal would take the Lord Stanley for the next few decades.)

They get married and it seems like half the world comes to see Yuna marry that one guy from the hockey team, and twenty-seven new hockey fans are converted during the reception. The other half of the world comes because motherfuckin’ David the Goddamn Menace Hollander married the Hockey Lady of All Time and not a single man he ever hit the ice with wants to miss it.

If they ever have kids, they will be indoctrinated into hockey.

(Almost thirty years later, forty-nine grown men watching the 2009 NHL draft will curse, drain a beer, and buckle in for the best hockey they’ll ever see in their life over this new “Hollander #24” in Montreal blue and red. They have no idea what’s coming, all they know is that it will be good.)

Yuna get herself the pinnacle of the hockey boys at school. She got the man who held up the whole team while looking like it was no sweat at all. Like he wasn’t the steadiest and most consistent knife-booted gremlin in the whole team. (You can take your hot-head, inconsistent center who can’t hit the broad side of a barn twice in a row and shove it, Marsha. When your boy misses a game, nobody blinks. When my David is throwing up his spleen with the flu, the next four games are lost. There’s a difference.)

Really, Shane Hollander was the universe’s answer to the question of what Yuna Hollander could achieve with the only match she would ever accept. And fortunately for the universe and Irina Rozanova’s son, she pulled David Hollander in like a magnet pulls to the poles.

chubby-cry-baby

hollander game night dynamics

shane x ilya vs yuna x david

basically a couple telepathy contest

david and yuna have been together 30 years but shane and ilya are waaaay too competitive to let them win

they’re setting taboo records

shane & yuna vs ilya & david

unstoppable force vs immovable object

ilya and david try to rile shane and yuna up the entire time - “wait explain the rules again” “no you’re done”

shane & david vs yuna & ilya

genuinely the sweetest dynamic

yuna keeps calling ilya her favourite son whenever they get a point

see also:

they have all the expansion packs

Monopoly and Catan go on for hours

UNO is brutal and evil

shane always wins poker - he has no tells!!!

ilya teaches them Russian card games

ilya is always trying to convince shane to give him special treatment - “i get nothing for marrying the banker?” “you’re a baby”

kiphunter

My mom cares a little too much about hockey. Now I see where you get it from.

HEATED RIVALRY 1.06 • The Cottage

trashcanniballecter

When David played hockey he had a very aggressive and physical play style. The man practically lived in the Sin Bin. One family bonding night the Hollanders bring out some of his old game tapes and Ilya just keeps looking between screen David dropping gloves and knocking some other players teeth out and current David happily doing a puzzle.

donttesme

"since rookie season" = "he has always had someone to share his burden with that understood what he was going through. he was never as alone as we feared. our baby was being taken care of someway."

gaynehollander

Ilya spending time at Yuna and David's house, destroying them at yahtzee, watching Shane's games with them. Openly cheering for his boyfriend in the company of the two other people who love him most in the world, screaming at the tv with Yuna when the ref makes an unfair call in their heavily biased opinions. Ilya being fed a home cooked meal that was specifically cooked because it's his favourite and then snuggling up on the couch with a bowl of ice cream that was bought with him in mind. Ilya feeling warm and accepted and at home, even in Shane's absence. Ilya finally having a family that wants nothing from him other than his company, his happiness, and his wellbeing. Excuse me while I cry.

cardiacanes

just learned about nhl dad’s road trips where all the players dads travel with them and sit together at the games. so naturally I’m thinking about how ilya had to watch all his teammates interact with their dads while he had to shove down any hope for ever having that kind of support and love from his own father. so when the time comes around for the first centaurs dad’s roadie after shane is traded, ilya is getting ready to put on his best comedic defenses so it doesn’t hurt quite as bad when Shane has to split his attention between ilya and David. but what Ilya doesn’t know is that David commissioned a custom 24-81 Hollander-Rozanov jersey so he could support both of his sons and when Ilya scores the game-winning goal in overtime he sees David on the Jumbotron with tears glinting in his eyes being jostled around by all the other dads and for just a second ilya can bask in the warmth of David’s pride and the ache in his chest dulls for just a moment

beehivedemocracy

I just saw a compilation of David Hollander moments and oh my frickin God bro. The way Shane is literally his whole world. Like every interaction Shane has 100% of his attention. And when Yuna (I love her don't get me wrong) tries making their lunches and what not about business and hockey, David is always trying to make it about spending time with Shane. Like him pulling the conversation from hockey back to the YouTube rabbit hole so much because it makes Shane smile and think about something other than his job for a minute. And Yuna trying to pitch going to London for a brand thing and when David sees Shane clearly doesn't want to he makes it sound like a vacation and focuses on them spending time together and it ALMOST gets Shane. And David noticing when Shane is already upset and tries to ask for his safe food and the fancy ass restaurant doesn't have it. He doesn't do anything but notices and takes stock of that and knows what that means to Shane even if it seems small. And him being the first one to notice Shane having a panic attack at the dinner table. He doesn't even tell his wife when he finds out about him and Ilya and even lies to try and cover for them. Shane is his baby and we don't talk about how amazing he is enough

froopa-coopa

I just think desolation avatar jon would be neat, y'know

#k.tma

$fractally blog's avatar$

fractally

So when I say Shane isn't a good person really I don't mean that he's like. Bad. Or malicious or evil. I just see so many fics that write him as this weird paragon of perpetual virtue, almost saintlike, where he's impossibly kind and an activist and sweet to Ilya like a little kitten and caring of his friends and I'm just sitting here thining....no??

Shane's canonically kind of a selfish guy! Not in a terrible way, he just doesn't really care about stuff outside of his direct sphere. He only gets into philanthropy when there's a direct benefit to him (laundering his relationship). He loves his friends but he's not super caring of them or all that invested in their lives (forgetting Hayden's baby's name is peak). Some of that is he's too wrapped up in his own shit and his secrets but I think a lot of it is just his personality. Shane's not selfish to the degree of it being a personality flaw (see: Shane giving up a day with Ilya to babysit Hayden's kids. I wouldn't have) but he's more selfish than selfless.

We don't hear about him sending signed pucks to sick kids or doing charity with the Voyageurs or that sort of thing. Maybe he's doing it in the background idk. Most likely he's got some assistant in charge of it. But that's not something he spends a lot of mental energy on.

He's not rude or cruel to people, but internally he's a bit judgemental. He sells himself pretty ruthlessly. He’s wealthier than anyone on this website can even comprehend. He’s a landlord.

To get to three cups in a decade Shane’s also got to be very locked in as captain. Like Theriault is this fandom villain (fair) but it just doesn’t make sense to have Shane constantly clashing with him and the Voyageurs and still winning over and over. We see Shane let homophobic comments slide in the locker room and I have to assume that’s his general approach to dealing with things in Montreal. Winning comes first.

I’ve said a million times I love Shane. I’m obviously obsessed with him, look at my many posts. But I just think he’s a grittier and more interesting than the fandom gives him credit for, they just turn him into like the anxious nagging wife who tells Ilya to pick up his socks and is Team Mom.

ebulliscent

This!!

Hudson imbued Shane with a lot of gentleness, and the series centring the romance means we see a lot less of Shane when he isn't Ilyamaxxing but book!Shane is incredibly cutthroat. He's impatient, he might not ~showboat~ as much as Ilya does (and he judges him for it constantly) but he's just as much of an attention whore. He isn't just admired because he's Shane Motherfucking Hollander; he's genuinely a bro, he's inaccessible because of his routine and his diet (which gives him major 'you can't sit with us' vibes that he does precious little to counteract, both because he's too wrapped up in his Everything to notice, and he wouldn't care enough if he did).

He's the ice queen, not Ilya. As far as the league, and even his team, is concerned, all routes to Shane Hollander are through excellence, proximity, or work. Ilya and Scott Hunter get the time of day because they're good. Hayden is his friend and Assistant Captain. JJ is a teammate and is sort of the glue of the Voyagers. Rookies get Captain Hollander because he's responsible for them. That's all.

There is no 'Holzy'. His team feels a proximity to him because he's an indelible part of their careers. They're barely a footnote in his, and they know it. Shane does too; he does try to make their success about the team but even when he's thinking of his dynasty and the camaraderie of the locker room in TLG he's thinking of it as a transaction, as loyalty that is owed to him rather than relationships he can trust. Things imploding the way they do in TLG is predicated upon this power imbalance, and that's why the Centaurs are such a good foil.

$fractally blog's avatar$

fractally

Yes!! Yes you get it.

I really like you pointing out how distant and inaccessible Shane is. He lives alone immediately, which is very unusual in hockey, being housed by older players during your rookie contract is almost seen as a guardianship or part of your training. The older players teach the younger guys how to sleep properly and cook good meals and such. Shane doesn't need any of that, he's already locked in. And he's very aware of the distance his talent and routines and diets creates between him and his teammates:

"all routes to Shane Hollander are through excellence, proximity, or work"

Yeah, exactly. Shane is so transactional---he thinks about his diet and routines as input / output. He doesn't eat red meat so that he skates better. He doesn't drink so that his muscle control is tighter. He's obviously an endorsement whore---and in the book it's HIM doing this, not his mom. He wants to be THE Shane Hollander, hockey phenom, and he sees this as a thing he can buy with his effort, his restriction, his repression, and his body. He didn't trip his way into being the greatest of all time, he planned it, piece by piece, and worked his ass off:

And yeah as to the friendships with Hayden and JJ, man. I don't know. I really feel like Ilya is the only person on the planet who gets Shane's platonic intimacy until very late into TLG, when Shane has a sweet moment with JJ. But like even his TLG convos with Hayden are very stilted. Shane makes a super rare vulnerability bid by admitting how he's thought about how tough it would be for him and Ilya to have kids and it flies right over Hayden's head.

These guys are friends because Hayden's his winger and because Hayden doesn't have much of a hockey ego and doesn't get insecure around Shane. That's what's happening there.

People adding in nicknames for Hollander is always funny to me because it feels very deliberate that they don't exist in the book. I think the fans call him all sorts of things, but I don't think a single person in that locker room is calling Shane Hollander by a nickname.

Honestly I think this is a hard thing for people to think about with a character which is why depictions of Shane file it away. Most of us have never had the experience of being the most important person in the room, the once without whom the room would not even exist. But that's Shane's day to day. Ilya (and Hunter, on the outside) are pretty much the only equals he ever interacts with. Everyone else is buying his time in various ways.

#k.hr