Haha, once again, I can't help myself but want to write about today's discourse - RR's writing of Shane in TLG.
If you are following the meltdown on X, it is things like RR saying that Shane was selfish and he had to fix that or that his strict diet was just another detail for Ilya to poke fun at.
All of this creates the perception for some fans that RR "hates Shane" or that "he's written as the villain of TLG."
Now, I definitely feel that RR was more interested in Ilya than in Shane in TLG, this is objectively measurable by the number of new dynamics Ilya got to explore his different sides vs Shane who got no new dynamics. I also think some of Shane's selfishness is RR's need to create a conflict and not having the patience to build something natural (like I'm sorry, Shane saying that "it's not your mother" comment is so ooc when he's been nothing but sensitive about Ilya losing his mom and as if it wasn't Shane who suggested the entire Irina Foundation down to the naming).
But when I read the actual book - RR's comments aside - I did not feel that Shane was more selfish than Ilya or that he had a bigger fault in their miscommunication. I think there are two things that make Ilya more "likeable / relatable" in TLG to the fandom overall.
One, is that he gets more depth and development because we see new sides of him. Scenes with Galina explore his trauma and mental health, scenes with Troy show him as a good friend, scenes with the Centaurs explore his style as captain and leader, scenes with the puppies explore his adorable, playful side, etc.
Shane gets very little new exploration. His conflict is narrowed in TLG to be between hockey career and Ilya. The character tries to break out of this cage. RR unintendedly writes an ED for him. We see glimpses of his anxiety, control issues, the pressure he's under in Montreal. Enough to sense that there is more to Shane (even if it's unintended), but not enough to fully understand him.
The second issue is that Shane suffers the fate of a mind character in a romance book. RR's writing is built on fanfic tropes which are rooted in romance books. Shane has the hallmarks of a mind character: analytical, protective, rational, stable, peaceful. Ilya is obviously written as a heart character: he's passionate, impulsive, empathic, chaotic.
I think in the confines of a romance book, the heart character always comes across more as the hero because he's aligned to the ultimate goal of the narrative: the happily ever after. Romance is the highest goal there is.
Now, I personally think that both Shane's and Ilya's pov are valid and has a plethora of interesting things to play with. If it was a pure sports novel, Shane's mind character would be more aligned with the narrative goal - being the best athlete. His control, discipline, performance diet would all be seen as the hallmarks of his geatness. But in the romance angle, these are seen as weaknesses. In the same sports novel, Ilya's career move from Boston to Ottawa, his lower drive (comparatively to Shane), his less disciplined eating and drinking, his smoking would all be seen as weaknesses that create obstacles to reaching his full potential as a hockey player. In the framework of the romance book, it's seen as heroic sacrifices made at the altar of true love.
In the end, the important thing is that in a relationship, mind and heart characters are like yin-yang. They need to reach a balance where they each compensate for the other's weaknesses, but also can embrace the traits of the other character.
Shane, in the crucial scene where he stands up to Crowell to choose Ilya behaves like a heart character, heroically aligning himself with the goals of the romance. But he retains also his strengths as a mind character with how he records the meeting to protect both their careers.
I think in the end, the book is more than the author's intentions, and Shane is more complex than RR imagined him to be. Because even if "it's not that deep" and "it's just a gay hockey porn book", the building blocks are the tropes born out of thousands of stories that go well beyond Rachel's intentions or ability as a writer. And the interpretation is with us readers, who interact with the story through the filters of our own feelings and experiences, our own frameworks and the meanings we attach to the tropes represented.
the entire concept of the omegaverse was specifically created to get jensen ackles as dean winchester pregnant and heâs been summarily dethroned by kpop stars two dudes who used to run around gotham city in speedos and a 20 year old from indiana
What fascinates me is that number 15 is actually canonically an omega though! That show is also called A/B/O Desire: https://mydramalist.com/749797-desire. I feel like we're breaking new ground here
thank you ao3 for being an archive and not an algorithm. thank you for letting me like things without consequences, thank you for being free with no ads, thank you for having lawyers to defend our freedom of speech. thank you tag wranglers. thank you to all authors and thank you ao3
And I don't just mean "oh, my little work mistake is actually nothing compared to a fiery crash that kills people," either. The reason commercial flight is so many orders of magnitude safer than any other form of transportation is because after every accident and incident, an independent regulatory body investigated it with the express goal of figuring out exactly what happened, why, and how to prevent the same thing from ever happening againânot to root out which person deserved the blame or the liability.
It's a simple, shockingly effective idea. It's also worlds away from how most people approach their own mistakes and the mistakes of others.
Because itâs never just one personâs fault. And even when it is, it still isnât.Â
The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely.Â
Everyone eventually has a bad day. Every component breaks down. Every computer gets a bad a Windows update and spirals into a reboot doom loop. If itâs possible for one personâs mistake to domino into a mushroom cloud of a fuckup, then that task is too critical to be one person's sole responsibility. The accident sequence starts with the design of the systemâso how do you improve the system to keep it from happening again?
oh yeah. The âmodern commercial aviation is the safest form of transportâ thing only applies to planes, btw. A helicopter is a beautiful metal horse that wants to break its legs and die so so so badly
Y'all for real please do these. Even if you're certain your posture doesn't suck. One day you will wake up with impinged shoulder pain like I did and let me tell you it fucking HURTS. Do these exercises even just once a week and it will make such a difference. Especially my fellow creatives out there, stop shrimping over your work and go do these right now. RIGHT NOW.
people canât be immortal. so in order to be immortal you canât be a person anymore. you have to be distilled. stripped of everything. till you come out the other side as an abstract concept.
