what's your personal take on what the point of the ottawa move was? i have seen people argue its a reward, and other people argue its a punishment. Please feel free to delete this if this is a weird ask!
Hello anon! No worries, i'm always glad to have these discussions!
I think the point was for it to be the happy ending. This is at the core of my personal beef with TLG. From what I read and from what the author herself says, i don't think it's supposed to be Shane's reward or punishment - it's a happy ending to the story. Shane playing with Ilya on the same team is a happy ending.
Okay so depending on how you look at it this is about to be either my most or least charitable read of TLG as a story and also, critically, a romance.
My reading is that at least a good part of TLG is playing on the grovel trope.
I think most of us are familiar with the grovel trope. It is an old staple of the romance genre, especially in heterosexual romance. The general idea is that the lover who's feelings have been taken for granted / hurt / ignored is finally recognized as the injured party and their partner does their best to win back their favor via great acts of love.
When you look at TLG, there is a lot of the hallmarks of the grovel trope at action. Shane is shown as someone who is ignoring/oblivious to Ilya's suffering (put a pin in that we'll get to it). He thinks uncharitably about Ilya being at Ottawa, and we get Ilya thinking that he could have won another cup at Boston, which is supposed to tell us 'hey Shane doesn't appreciate his partner who made sacrifices for him'. There are words used like 'dismissively' or 'bitchily' that's telling us that he isn't seriously considering Ilya's hints about maybe coming out. This all is framed as making Ilya's depression worse. And this then culminates in a big fight where Shane suddenly realizes he's been a terrible boyfriend, then their communication is expedited via airplane emergency landing and Shane proposes and decides he is now ready to come out actually. And then they get outed and Shane gets to declare 'i choose him' and then support Ilya through the loss in playoffs and then later his admission of suffering from depression.
But Reva, you say, throughout the story, Shane checks in with Ilya about his mental health multiple times. He is caring, and Ilya shuts him down every. damn. time. He is hurting from the hiding but as he says in the very start of the story 'he is willing to play the long game'. What is he supposed to do read Ilya's mind? How is this supposed to sell me on him being ignorant or oblivious?
Because the grovel trope in TLG is centered around the conflict of Shane's unwillingness to come out. His ignorance is not about Ilya's suffering but about the fact that the cause of his suffering is being in closet (which is also not something Ilya ever brings up meaningfully before the entire boxing day fight but fine. fine). The narrative does not resolve the fight equally. It does not say, hey Ilya was not communicating his needs and was actively avoiding Shane's attempts to understand his feelings. It instead places the blame on Shane's feet and again centers Ilya's sacrifice by having him declare 'i would give up more'. This is because Shane's primary failure as a boyfriend, according to the narrative, is keeping Ilya in the closet. Him not wanting to share his relationship with people, when they are in the National Homophobia League is his primary offense. What he is making up for is not being a careless boyfriend - it is for wanting their relationship to remain a secret. The enemy to be defeated becomes not homophobia but the desire to be closeted.
The Ottawa ending is a happy ending, because Shane's emotional arc is firmly tied to how he treats his boyfriend and his diet, his loyalty to Montreal, his unwillingness to come out and even his hockey are all obstacles in the path of this journey.
This is why when he finally has a realization of 'i have treated my boyfriend badly' he is then able to easily jump and skip over these obstacles to a happy ending.
Shane's personal tragedy of being discriminated against and having to leave the team he built from the fucking ground up isn't given narrative space because that isn't the point of the story. It's not relevant. It's side dressing to take care of the happy ending where Ilya's final problem i.e. the long distance part of their relationship, is easily wrapped up with a beautiful bow. Ottawa isn't his punishment or his reward, because it is not about him. It's the happy ending of the story because the story is not about him.
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